... Darryn ...
the only part
The thunder echoed across the sky. She counted in her head, remembering her childhood. Counting was her mother's magic spell to make the storm go away. Even with her eyelids pressed tight she saw the red of the lightening, sense it burning her skin during brief moments of illumination. When her open eyes searched the room she saw only the same familiar shadows. Every moment of time became central to her awareness as the storm drifted away leaving behind it a calm wake. The air was almost too calm.
The silence beat against her ears. It hummed to her. She could hear Daryn breathing but it was like the sigh of silence itself. Her bare skin touched his as they lay in the darkness. A pit deep inside her welled alternately with fear, excitement and loathing. As she traced the intricate design on the quilt she questioned the dark room "Where was the person who had made the quilt?" Rolling over she reached for a package of cigarettes, pulled one out and lit it. The cherry red tip of the cigarette glowed warmly. Lightening trapped in an instant. It was a small cage that trapped that violence. She inhaled the smoke deep into her lungs enjoying the raw feeling in her throat. A cigarette was not what she really wanted but she smoked it anyway. Waving her hand back and forth she watched the little tail of light the cigarette left behind. She wrote her name, Katherine. She wrote his name, Daryn. If she strained to keep her eyes open wide the fiery script could be retained for a few seconds before it vanished. With the cigarette to her lips she stole another breath of smoke.
Daryn sighed and rolled over toward her slinging an outstretched arm across her stomach. The sheets were rippled around his body like a shroud of sand caressed by liquid fingers. He slept miles away from her. Katherine held her cigarette close to his arm so she could see his skin in the warm glow. Wood brown skin with fine hairs covering the length of his forearm. The design on Daryn's ring sparkled weakly in the sparse light. She wrote her name again, Katherine.
Time always passed slowly for those who were waiting. Cigarette crumpled in the ashtray she stared through the darkness at Daryn's face. The sleeping face of a friend fading into that of a stranger. Had she ever known what his favourite colour was? Had a piece of music ever stirred violent emotion within him? Perhaps they were gone. The memories that were left were smudged and half-erased.
Daryn's lips were parted slightly, his eyelashes resting lightly on his cheeks. "Butterfly kisses" someone had told her when she was younger while he had fluttered his eyelashes against her face. She thought Daryn had a handsome face. It was a face she knew well even when sleep wiped away the day's emotion. She pulled his hand gently up to her chest and pressed it against her beating heart. It thumped out a message to Daryn but he was unaware. Having his hand on her body made her more aware of her own breathing and the rhythm of her life. She took shallow breaths, two for every one of his. Beat, beat, beat, what was she trying to tell him? Katherine could not understand the coded rhythm of her own heart. It held a message that even she could not decipher. She was betrayed by her own body, the origin of her every thought became the vehicle for each motion.
Daryn's hand was familiar yet new. It was strange to hold his hand so tight and be ware of every contour. When they lay beside each other at night there were not interruptions. Without conversation she was free to explore. When they touched during the day she scarcely had time to notice the contact let alone the details. She savored the nighttime moments when she could absorb those details and paint a mental picture of hem for a busier time. There was no way she could know his thoughts but she could know his body.
She wondered what it would be like to hold Daryn's thoughts in her hands so close to her heart. She wondered if thought would be a sluggish liquid or wisps of smoke. Thoughts may not have any physical substance at all. Thoughts may be a heavier weight than she could lift. What traveled through Daryn's mind would remain a mystery to her.
Katherine wondered all the time. She was aware of how little certainty there was in her life. Indecision haunted her in the darkest moments of the night. Nighttime chipped away at her confidence filling her thoughts with insecurity and anxiety. Anxiety was why she slept with the windows open leaving an inviting passage to the cold air. There was a standing invitation for the cold night to come inside and sweep out the cobwebs of worry with dreams. She waned her blood to freeze so the pain would be dulled. That cold air could bring her peace from her questions.
A shiver moved her flesh and she entwined her fingers with Daryn's. All right. Now, move your middle finger. Easy. Yet when her own fingers were woven together they became one organism. It was difficult for her to distinguish the fingers of one hand from those of the other. That was knowing something well, not being able to separate one from the other. Katherine needed to know when she would feel that sameness with Daryn. IF two could become one, synonymous, that feeling eluded her. The times she felt isolated and alone were times when she was with other people. Words would not come to her lips even thought her thoughts were determined to the smallest of components. The words remained within her, rattling around.
Lying next to Daryn she was only more aware of the boundaries of her own presence. She longed for security from the presence of another rather than safety through contact. As tight as she held on to Daryn she could not pull security from him. She could see Daryn in the darkness but could not bring him back across the invisible chasm between them. She was scrambling on the edge of that chasm, thoughts racing and becoming meaningless when they left the confines of her body.
Her mind screamed anger at her inability to giver herself wholly to someone. Distance was her only challenge. In her mind she pictured rocks falling into the dark chasm as her feet scrambled franticly to keep their grip on the edge. The centre of irrationality deep within her wept. She knew that wishes could not be tarnished and hope could not be banished but it had become so difficult to hang on to the brighter sparks. Her loneliness fed off of all that she did now know.
Daryn mumbled something in a restless sleep and startled Katherine. She wanted to know his dream world and to open the door to his inner land and wander freely. Inside that dream world she would be wrapped in his security and wrapped within his being. That far place seemed to her to be the destination she must reach to know herself completely. To crawl inside his head and scrutinize herself from over there would be perfect. That view would be untainted by her goals and her self-directed failures. What did he see when he opened his eyes and saw her face in the morning light? What did his eyes behold?
What she saw was an image of Daryn watered down by the darkness. There was no sharpness to his features. The dark really came from deep within her. It seeped out through her skin pervading the air around her. The clock said 1:12 am. Tomorrow had been brought in under the influence of the night's storm of worry. Seeing tomorrow arrive time and time again had made her weary.
Cars! She could hear cars on the road beyond the windowpane. These were daytime sounds that she could reach for to pull herself from her thoughts. Distant thunder rumbled a quiet reminder that the tempest was never completely gone. Night noises were so loud.
As the night dripped away she knew there would be another. There were clocks ticking in the bedroom. She was distracted by the fact that two clocks did not tick at the same time. They countered one another in an argument of chronology. Each clock restated its point over and over again. Because the constant ticking filled the room she was suddenly ware of the speed of time's passing. Time was lost so quickly. She turned her head to look at the fluorescent hour hand on the alarm clock willing it to move visibly. The clock could demonstrate the speed of the hour. She could not see the hour hand move until she became aware of the fact that it no longer showed the same time. By then it was too late.
Tick, tick, tick, tick. A quick succession of reminders that the leaves would wither, the snow would fall and the sun would warm. Her thoughts moved forward because they must. She knew that no one could think backward lest it be born into memory. Each time something was remembered it was reborn. Small things changed and other words might be shared with people.
Katherine lightly touched her lips to Daryn's hand. The gesture felt odd to her, misplaced. His skin smelled like the sheets on the bed, crisp and fresh. His hand felt indirectly warm, leather heated from within. The bed was warmer with two people in it but she felt no more secure. The ground beneath her still felt unstable. She might pitch forward into he obscurity of doubt at any instant. Her grip on his sleeping fingers would not deliver her from her fate. Her grip would not deliver her from anything.
She longed for Daryn to awaken, squeeze her hand and tell her that he could feel that darkness as well. She willed him to open his eyes and tell her that if they held fast to one another the knowing of each other would come. Daryn would not wake until the morning and when he did he would not know the hours she had spent wondering. These were intimate moments she would be reluctant to share with anyone.
At night she would painfully acknowledge the contrast between wants and needs. She wants to lay in bed in the darkness unafraid because of the warm body beside her. What Katherine needs is so much more than that. What she needs is almost beyond her comprehension. How could she find the very thing she had so much trouble defining? Her body and mind would be exhausted by the time she arrived at any conclusion.
Skin was a border between them. Her skin soft and white in the night, his dark and rough. She could believe they were so alike, at times, when they uttered the same words at the same moment; when their eyes meeting prompted laughter. In the naked dark he felt only the unsettling tingle in her spine brought on by the presence of a stranger.
story and words and photos Copyright Charlotte Kinzie 2009.
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