Suspension

Suspension 1

I was there in the tumbleweed-flavored desert with you. We were there, on our backs in the sand and grit and spiny things, dry as paper, aware of our existence but we didn’t look. We didn’t see each other – just skidding clouds that ambled across our eyeballs and seared into our memories. We didn’t speak, but I knew you were there, nose-to-nose with a vast denim sky and miles and miles of empty. That denim sky, tiled, each frothy square a mile in every direction. Those interrupting, rude clouds in a smattering of anger, ripping holes in the tiles of the sky. We were both afraid to breathe in the starkness – you squirmed and writhed, but I lay entirely still, tension through my spine, and my hands white-knuckling hard clods of dirt and scratchy tufts of grass.2

It wasn’t like this was a new experience – it had happened before, but there were no denim skies, no scrubby, thirsty plants. No, the last time wasn’t so desperate and dry like that desert. That time, we were in some little meadow in July or August, the sun working so hot it was sucking all the moisture straight out of the leaves. There was a thick copse of trees to our left – rather looked like the grass had sprung up denser and tougher than the knee-high wispy stuff we trampled.3

That time, we danced under gathering storm clouds, ecstasy on both our faces and copulation in our thoughts. You were covered in dirt and wearing an old white t-shirt, streaked with grass stains and other organic matter. I was wearing a long, old dress thin as parchment, as when those angry clouds opened, the dress disintegrated off my body and into the dirt. You and I, we turned our faces like some sort of basin to the sky, and rivulets of muddy water ran down our necks. Steam rolled across our bodies, water mixed with sweat and grit, you looked me straight in the eyes and asked me if we were dying. We both laughed and rolled in the humidity until we were sick.4

It had happened before, but not like this. It wasn’t unlike these things to happen, but before, flowers bloomed and we watched fawns skitter, frightened, through sticky pine forest. Before, warm breezes turned to hot, spicy tunnels of theory, and we were right in the middle of it all. Before, we would lie perfumed by damp, dark soil and dig holes up to our knees to nowhere. Before, we would stare at each other until it felt that we both saw a simple tintype or woodcarving, our surroundings laughably immobile and on the verge of immortality. But that was all before, and this was then.5

Then, I watched you pull and ache against yourself, and wanted to tell you not to fight, that these useless battles between gravity and soul are futile, but my throat was full of scorpions and the sand they nested in, and I couldn’t utter a sound. There we were; we had seen the apocalypse in the barren wasteland around us, had seen the cities crumble and go back to the earth from whence they came; we had seen time etched into the skies in bright, flaming blood colors and melt into soft pastels; we had seen it all, seen it all together. We saw the earth begin and end, rise and fall, over and over in that vast denim sky, and I saw you fight and win and lose.6

We were in an armistice from the start. We had signed treaties in the pouring rain, we had waved our stark-white handkerchiefs in the arid heat, we had discussed ceasefire policy while salt spray stung our eyes.7

It would happen again, over and over, and repeat and repeat and repeat, blood colors into pastels, Osaka burned into the ground, there in the pine forest, on the ocean floor, in hot waist-high meadows, in that burning wretched desert over and over and over and over. You would fight and I would fight and you would lose and I would win and I would lose and you would win, again and again and again; someday our souls will tear loose and escape our dirty, sandy, salty, muddy, sweaty bodies and we will be there, too, stark-white handkerchiefs skirting through an empty desert on hot wind currents, together.8