She’d come before dawn. I heard her hair, whispering along the ledge of the window as she slid through. I waited, curled in my bed, for the silence. I am always waiting for silence, yet it never comes. The more you search for something so simple, the more there will be sounds, strange lights whirring and wind pressing into the house. The more you go looking for it, the less it is there.
I end up settling for substitutes—not silence, but a cessation of louder things, a calm, a frantic hush.
She is in. Her hair clings to the window, reddish, rusted by the dark. A few strands cling to the foggy window, and I lean forward to brush them back, trap them behind her ear. I see the purpled sky beyond the window, the smudge of fog, the black lattice of branches.
I see the glistening of her eyes, but I do not see the characteristics of eyes. They are more like the old light of stars, the sad, celestial glimmer.
“What did you dream about?” She asks, her whisper crackling over my skin. My sheets are cold, but my chest swells with heat, the strange arch of my heart pressing blood around.
I tell her about the dream—
I am in a hall of mirrors. there are no exits. Silent fingerprints smear the reflective walls, white flecks of heat, pressing outward. Searching, seeking.
I find my pen, floating in the silk lining of my coat pocket. I write this down, felt-tip, ink cells darkening the pale surface of my forearm. I watch the ceiling of the hall, taking note of my shortened reflection. Birds must see me this way, when i look up at them. They must think I always look so compact, bizarre, lost in perspective.
I tell her about the sudden knowledge that the hall is not empty. I take a few steps and find a table with two drawers. a telephone, in the second drawer down. It is black, the buttons are black and the numbers worn off. It rings, sounding muffled, cramped.
I say, “Yes?”
—Her face in the dark, the chill of the air she brought in with her before the window was shut.
She leans forward, her jacket icy against my skin. “Do you always remember your dreams?” she asks.
I let a moment pass as she leans back, taking the spot next to me on the white bed.
“No.”
We stare at the ceiling, the paper stars I have hanging from strings, imitations, vague representations of celestial bodies cut from dead trees. they are more earth than star. They were of the ground, they are now floating. no wonder we are very confused, backwards creatures.
She lets out a breath as if she had been holding it. She is still cold. I find her hand in the maze of sheets created between us. Cold fingers interlace.
“Who was on the other line?” she asks.
“Mm?”
“In your dream.”
“Oh,” I say, though I’d known. “Let’s not talk about that now.”
She nods, rustling against the pillow, and there is more of the imitational silence. A rattle of a heater. We are all fake, all settling for second-best if we can. We search, haunted, for strange things, hoping to see ourselves in something else, in someone else, as if we will one day realize who we are, what we are.
Finally, the light shifts in the sky. She smiles at me, wordless, and rises to sit up, exhaling quietly. I open the window and her kiss is dry, cold, sweet.
She slips away and i hear her footsteps in the ice, shooting out into the fog.
I wonder what she thinks about when she walks.
When I walk, I wonder about my reflection, I wonder what other people see in me, what they assume, as I reflect hundreds of times in the hall. I know the table, the second drawer, the black telephone. I put it to my ear and i can hear, as if in a distant world, her sigh, cold and sweet.
“Yes?” i say, and close my eyes.
Goals for the summer:
Music:
- Learn the last movement of Saint Saens Concerto No. 3
- Learn Partida No. 3
- Finish my etude book
- Work on Beethoven Sonata
Earn enough money for rent next year.
See my friends! And don’t miss my Hartford ones as much as I can help it.
Get my body back.
Start writing again.
