child's play

the words from an uninterrupted hour of pen on paper in the afternoon sunshine

“How was that?” He asked as he peeled his lips from mine like a story beneath another story.

“Meh. Fine? I don’t know. Didn’t feel much.” I maintained clear eye contact. He deserved my honesty and full attention more than the ground or the record player over his bony left shoulder.

“What’s your story anyway?”

“What do you mean? I don’t really have one I guess.”

“Sure you do. Everyone does.”

“Well what’s yours?”

“Do you know what it’s called, like when - ” His mind and eyes drifted to a spider sitting in the bullseye center of its web strung between the record player and the highest branch of the fig tree, tucked into the seam where the two walls met.

He kept talking from there, with his eyes elsewhere. Near me, not to me. I suppose I didn’t deserve his full attention. But what of his honesty?

“Like when you’re too busy questioning reality to live anything real at all? I don’t know if it has a name. But that’s my story. I’m just trying my best to participate. Maybe that’s a better way to put it.”

The spider didn’t move. Or it moved too slowly to catch.

“Can I kiss you again? That, I know, is real,” he continued.

“How can I believe your story when you won’t tell it to my eyes? How can you kiss me if you’re staring well beyond me?”

“Oh.” He blinked, like surfacing. “Sorry. Yeah. I didn’t realize where my eyes were. I thought maybe I could find a shortcut to telling you my story. Writing on the wall.”

He was looking at me now. Almost desperately. Certainly honestly. So I leaned in to kiss him. Our mouths found each other without asking again. Something in the second attempt turned sideways. His hand hesitated at my jaw, then stayed. For a moment I lost track of where to put my eyes. So I closed them. That seemed to solve it. Or hide it. The record player clicked softly behind him, though nothing was playing.

When we pulled apart, he didn’t ask how it was this time. I noticed that before I noticed anything else. The spider was no longer in the center of its web. Or maybe it was and I’d misplaced it entirely. The threads held their shape either way.

I almost told him then. I almost said - “I feel it now,” or something like that. Something that would make it true in a way we could both agree on.

Instead I watched his eyes, waiting to see where they would go next. They stayed this time. Long enough to feel like a decision.

“I think -” I said, and stopped. It was there, whatever it was. Somewhere between, like the web, holding even when I couldn’t see what sat at its center.

“I don’t know,” I said instead. Which felt closer and truer.

I leaned back just enough to look at him again, to check if it was still happening.
It was. Or I was. I couldn’t tell the difference, and didn’t try to. He nodded like I’d said something complete. Like I’d finished the thought at the edge of my brain.

“Yeah,” he said. “Exactly.”

I wasn’t sure what he was agreeing with. Behind him, the record player started without warning in a low, uneven rotation, the needle catching on nothing. Just the sound of contact. A soft, repetitive drag. We both turned toward it this time.

“That happens sometimes,” he said, though it clearly hadn’t been happening before. The rhythm was off. Something almost intentional about the way it failed to begin.

The spider had reappeared, but not where I expected. Closer to the edge now, one leg testing a line that didn’t seem to be attached to anything.

“Do you hear that?” I asked.

He tilted his head. “Yeah.”

“It’s like it wants to be something.”

He smiled. “Prosody,” he said. “Like speech before meaning. Or under it.”

“Before?”

“Or instead of.”

The spider had shifted again, closer now to where the wall bent inward. One thread slack, another pulled too tight, the whole shape holding anyway. I stepped closer to him, just enough to feel the adjustment.

“I think I miss things,” I said.

“Everyone does.”

“No, I mean while they’re happening.”

He looked at me then. More directly than before. It almost startled me into stillness.

“Like you’re not synced,” he said.

“Yeah.”

“With what?”

I almost said you. Instead: “Everything.”

The record player caught for half a second, on a fragment of sound - a swell of something orchestral, distant, warped by dust. Then it slipped back into its almost-pattern. His eyes had already moved to the gulf between us. I felt it then, as a tilt. Like the room had shifted a degree off center. Or I had.

“I no longer wish to be incapable of recognizing what I am part of - ” I started, and then lost the rest of it, the shape of it, because saying it made it feel already gone. It sounded rehearsed out loud, like I was quoting something I hadn’t written. The spinning of the earth, maybe. Or the being part of it.

He didn’t interrupt.

I could feel my body trying to match something - his breathing, the rhythm behind us, around us, ahead of us, the strange cadence of the moment arranging and rearranging itself to the weight of the air in the room.

“I think I love him and I don’t know why,” I said, quieter, privately, the sentence landing somewhere between us like it had been spoken before, even if before referred to another lifetime.

“Me?” he asked, not joking.

I looked at him. Really looked this time, like I was checking for alignment.

“I don’t know,” I said. Which felt more accurate than yes.

The spider let go of one thread and held on with the others. The web adjusted around the absence without collapsing.

“That’s kind of what I mean,” he said softly.

“What?”

“Participating.”

His eyes stayed on mine. Long enough to feel like effort. Long enough to feel like something could hold. The record player clicked again. Then again. I kept my eyes open when he leaned in this time. Just to see if it would stay. Or if I would.

I was so tempted to lose everything, just to begin again.