Dolven

He had departed that evening in a spiraling twilight, suddenly and painfully aware that he had merely been a roadway that had slid easily into her life and merely continued past it in the same tiresome and predictable manner.  He realized he might have scored a glancing blow, a mild bruise, but ultimately if she were to examine her limbs and her tussled up heart she would find everything neatly in place and relatively undisturbed.


She had not been lonely.  At least not in the same canyon that he was.  She had not probably ever been alone, and probably, by all accounts, would never be.  He just had caught her at a bad time...maybe a vulnerable time although that word and her never mixed...for to do so would imply a weakness and she would spackle that up and paint right over any fissure he might find.

He was exhausted.  She was as big as this place, he thought, hurtling past unlit fields and flats that were blacker than they ever seemed.  He could not simply pull on a thread of her and find an unraveling; rather he would find himself doing what she herself claimed he could never do:  catch rain.  It was a favorite saying of hers, implying the impossibility of catching the thunderstorm in one's palm, while the body was pelted with a thousand drops that escaped.  She had marked him, like a passing squall, and he was drenched in something that he had not ever felt.  And he could not scrub it away, could not towel it off. 

     I am not in the same place as you she had said.  He had pulled away, and while he could still taste the brine of her tears on his lips he had already known what she was going to say.

     I'm not in any place he offered.  I'm here right now, but only because you asked me to be here.  I came here because you asked me and so far that's all I've done.

     I know.  I asked you and you came here.  You always come back.  You've always come back to me and I guess I know that you'll always will.  And I'm not sure if I want that.

     He was further back from her now, and she was looking down.  For some strange reason she was almost indefinably beautiful when she was looking down, sculpted almost, her sharp features softening and it reminded him of a single word:  Grace.  She possessed it and most embodied it when she stood like this.

     I probably would.  But I would come back to try to discover, or to try to build upon something.  I wouldn't come back like a retrieval.  I wouldn't just come back because you said so.

     I'm not so sure she said.  Watch he said.  And he strode out of the room.  He walked down the steps and he stood for a second outside his car, where he could see the reflection of the front porch.  It stayed empty.  He had a feeling it would remain that way for awhile.

He felt dug out, mined.  He felt dolven, his inside scooped out and heaped out onto some table.  He didn't mind the feeling, it was just tiring.  He felt like perhaps she might watch the taillights and hope that they might brighten with a stop...but he kept his foot from the brakes and he hurtled into the evening.