Lykren
03-26-2013, 06:09 PM
A Fairy Tale
I bit my lip as he smiled. He held out his hand and asked where we were going. The hills slipped by outside the window and I kept my silence and refused to shake his hand. Eventually he turned away to gaze at the landscape, and I did the same.
As we slowly stopped, he seemed anxious. He tapped his left foot and rubbed his jaw. He got out of the car as soon as we were still, and as I followed him I watched him running across the park. After a minute he stopped before a large oak tree. That was where we had played as children. I caught up.
It was still early and there was dew on the grass. We sat down with our legs crossed and both looked in several directions, anywhere but directly in the other’s face. Then I spoke.
“Do you want to move over to the other side?” It was sunnier there. He shook his head.
Two hours later we got up and went in separate directions. As I walked away I tried to discern what had changed. I had never before questioned that where I was was a center of something. But while we talked I had felt, for the first time, numbness, as if somewhere far away there was a tumult I had been removed from. That haziness, which involved me in the morning glow, felt utopian, the opposite of primal, yet not pleasant.
I got home. It was raining. I sat alone in my house, alternating between flipping through old magazines and staring out the window. The music I had playing seemed to gather and disperse without rhythm, it was the junction of warmth and the rain outside, renewal and the ray of time. I blinked.
When I woke up it was dark and I was alert. I ran outside into the damp night and lifted my hands and tried not to breathe too fast, circling around and around the little garden that was walled in with blue stone. The night crept in on every side, and I felt secure.
Thanks very much for your thoughts.
I bit my lip as he smiled. He held out his hand and asked where we were going. The hills slipped by outside the window and I kept my silence and refused to shake his hand. Eventually he turned away to gaze at the landscape, and I did the same.
As we slowly stopped, he seemed anxious. He tapped his left foot and rubbed his jaw. He got out of the car as soon as we were still, and as I followed him I watched him running across the park. After a minute he stopped before a large oak tree. That was where we had played as children. I caught up.
It was still early and there was dew on the grass. We sat down with our legs crossed and both looked in several directions, anywhere but directly in the other’s face. Then I spoke.
“Do you want to move over to the other side?” It was sunnier there. He shook his head.
Two hours later we got up and went in separate directions. As I walked away I tried to discern what had changed. I had never before questioned that where I was was a center of something. But while we talked I had felt, for the first time, numbness, as if somewhere far away there was a tumult I had been removed from. That haziness, which involved me in the morning glow, felt utopian, the opposite of primal, yet not pleasant.
I got home. It was raining. I sat alone in my house, alternating between flipping through old magazines and staring out the window. The music I had playing seemed to gather and disperse without rhythm, it was the junction of warmth and the rain outside, renewal and the ray of time. I blinked.
When I woke up it was dark and I was alert. I ran outside into the damp night and lifted my hands and tried not to breathe too fast, circling around and around the little garden that was walled in with blue stone. The night crept in on every side, and I felt secure.
Thanks very much for your thoughts.