Fire & Water

Sleep comes in waves, crashing -- long breathless deep-sunk hours, and then sudden surfacing, heavy intake of breath (and down down down again while eyes are still half-open). Dreams gather and condense, solid and more solid (and grains of sand turn into boulders, but not the other way around). They disappear into nothing, no traces, washed away.

Passing words back and forth like an open bottle, and they trail warmth on the way down, pure and undiluted. Lick a careless drop from your wrist, faint stains left on your lips (and your mouth tingles, breath velvet-rich).

You've been away for five days; you've been gone for months. (You'll be gone always, maybe, or longer than that, whatever unnamed distance or scope of time that is -- something inconceivable and terrible and realer than the realest thing.)

She tells me that when I stop getting up to my usual mischiefs, that's when she'd start to worry about me. (It's like the whole world is somehow missing eyes.) I eat crystallised ginger, big chunks of it, straight from the bag. I like the sweet burn of it against my tongue, and slowly down my throat; I like the way it lingers. (She thinks ginger tastes of soap, and that has always made me wonder how much soap she's tasted, in her lifetime. I'd imagine none, and so it can't be a very fair comparison after all.)

I read things, sometimes (often) that make me think of you. It's like a background humming in my head; the things are always there, but it takes vibrating at the proper frequency before the tuning in is possible (things you never notice until you have a reason to, until the universe taps you on the shoulder, shakes you, shouts at you to Pay Attention, Stupid -- or a constant and insidious whisper, and that makes it more dangerous).

There's a moment, emerging out of sleep -- or the halfway moment just before -- when the residue of dreams still clings to you, when the more solid Real of life can't quite wrap its hands around your throat, gentle and threatening (and it can smile, and smile, and look you straight in the eyes, because there's nowhere you can run to, and you both know it; when one has all the power, there's no need for any show of force). There's a moment when you might know things, secret hidden things, or you might know nothing at all, blank and empty and waiting to be filled up; it's gone before it even registers.

I woke myself up laughing; I have no idea what could have been so funny.