Shadows

They met under bright lights, over dead fish. They parted on concrete. He stuck out his hand for introductions, but Audrey Rose curtsied instead, a soft blush spreading over her face. Peaches.

Benjamin. The second letter of the alphabet, only one away from hers. The first curves of a language. Ahead of its time, the letter B. Rounded, complete. Smooth spaces attached and dependent on straight spaces for their very formation. Only D’s were as nicely formed. P’s were like a flamingo, top heavy and R’s, rested on a tripod of lines, a rebellion against straight, but not enough curves to win the battle. Thus the confusion began for B’s, only a line away from their solidarity, an integration of forms that may have no business being together.

Kindness and pain in his eyes, wrinkled, entangled bodies, stories that were older than Audrey Rose, maybe older than time. Audrey Rose wanted to crawl into those wrinkles and ask them questions there were no answers for. Instead, she ignored him, and danced around her girlfriend exchanging stories of walls and boundaries that could be crossed and those that couldn’t. Boundaries that they had crossed into worlds they could not share, did not have the courage or laughter to share. They filled their minds with sake and wine and laughter.

Audrey Rose went home. To his home. To her home. Home alone. Her tiny fingers wrapped around his strength, his intensity. She did not want to let go of his fingers, but somehow it slipped out of her grasp. So many things beyond her grasp.

She knew him, but could not see him even when he was standing inches from her. The shadows had come for him. Descended upon him. She knew those shadows, had hibernated with them, succumbed to them until they tired of her. Down darkened tunnels, spirals. She could hear the world crashing around him, coaxing him with promises of despair. An easy place to rest. Shadows grew comfortable, moved around his heart. Audrey Rose wanted to claw at them, tear at them. Scare them. Anything to make them go away.

There were too many spaces between A and B.

The concrete was hot, heat curling, slithering around her legs. Seeing him again, in the context of himself, she felt the soft gauze that had wrapped her soul begin to unravel, until the last threads gently slipped away. She knew better than to reach for them. They didn’t belong to her anymore.

“Maybe now isn’t the time for us to know each other.” He offered.

“Maybe we’ve already known each other.” Audrey Rose started to move closer, but held herself back, let her arms stretch out to the sky and tilt her head back.

“The sky is about to open.”

“There is always time.” He said.

Audrey Rose’s head lifted to face him.

“Time and apples and bananas.”

“What?”

“Apples and bananas. If you ever need a friend, someone who won’t ask questions that can’t be answered, call me and say apples and bananas.”

“Then what?”

“Then I will come and hold your hand in silence and share your pain.”

Summer rains plunged from the sky, washing away a moment, their moment. Red and bloody, something pounded between them. Hung between them.

Audrey Rose felt her world in her belly button. “And if there’s not time, then there’s always the place where I knew you for a little while.” Her voice softened. “Who knows, maybe one night, I’ll walk through your dreams. I can always know you there.”

Details needed to be attended to. Nourishment had to be gathered. Time stopped. As they began to move away, the clouds parted. The faintest trace of light shone down.

“Only a few feet away.” Audrey Rose called to him as she turned her back, closed her eyes, covered her ears and counted to a hundred.

-Do not attempt to recreate the events of Audrey Rose’s life. They will result in internal and/or external death or at the very least a yeast infection.