Prose: Endless Twilight

I remember that day we hid upstairs. Peering down between the floorboards somewhere between loneliness and fear, I tasted the air all around her. Delighting in the smell of monsters lurking behind those eyelids, crowding out this vision of me hunched up in the corner. She never looked my way, just shivered as the world crept up on us with it's cruel sunlight and endless gazing and slunk into my arms shallow from the effort of silence. Our skeletons stacked in the corners of the hallway closet, dusted off and polished for company. Never too old or too young to hang out our problems to see, we used to take pride in propping them up in lifelike poses, dressing them in fancy clothes. I was busy washing her hair with my fingertips and remembering to breathe while she sewed up our latest designs.

When the wan light of this treacherous day had pierced the flowered armor she so skillfully deployed across the windows I left her laying on the bed to see how far the enemy had come. Defenses shattered, I peered down at the encampment cooking fires by the dirt road leading up the hill. The one we'd infiltrate on Saturday nights pretending to be in love so we could screw and drink. Looking at the twisted reflection bouncing off the lead glass I wondered why I lingered here in this endless gloom. The blend of tea, sweat and weed swirled around me in clouds of ecstasy and desolation, daring me to try and walk downstairs. I remember thinking I had been stuck in a loop in that moment, like the shuttle control of my mind had been fucked with by some cruel bastard intent on making whiskey my only water. I found myself back on the altar, tied to her with rope I never brought, staring through the back of her head and trying to untie my hands without making a sound. But I think I was her captive audience, the jewel in her crown of thorns.

I wasn't even needed there, just a warm body and a pliable soul that eased the burden of an emotional hoarder. Those endless stacks of well thumbed through magazines depicting couples on Parisian avenues, dimly lit cafes and wine cellars were the walls she had put my artwork on. Just the topmost layer of a collage of wistful yearning and childish dreams. We'd spend these perpetual twilight hours together painting pictures on each others faces and making love to our favorite masks. Later in that endless night, I found her eyes behind a bookshelf full of empty cigarette packs and used condoms and tried to put them back. Only they didn't fit anymore, the sockets burned cold by peering between fiction and this dim imitation of her fantasy.

We rolled around in the whispers of an endless night for years, reaching further and further into each others throats, as she tried desperately to tie one last knot in a rope of pleasure and guilt. I finally woke one day to find the upstairs room empty, a museum of obsession echoing through my mind. Her clothes were laying on the floor among the stacks of morning skirmishes that turned into afternoon passion and torment. I packed the last of myself into a rusty car and headed down the dirt road past the enemies lines, musing that they never looked so transparent as they did that afternoon.