[lj idol] week eight | "even if you won't, say you will..."
[a continuation of sorts...]
*
Lily comes when the stars are out.
My head swims, clouded by all the clichés she skirts but never quite becomes. There’s tap, tap, tapping on my bedroom window, insistent but not aggressive, and when I shove the loose netting aside and move to lift the heavy pane a little higher, she’s got her finger across her lips, shhhhh, like the real intruder here is me.
Maybe she’s right.
She reaches one arm out, twists her fingers through mine, and the memory of hours before bounces along my spinal cord, a staccato beat that trips into double time when I take her weight and haul her up and over and through and down.
And down and down.
The sound of plovers standing guard on the lawn outside, and her breath, sawing between teeth and lips and across her tongue, compete for space inside my skull. She’s done this before, it means nothing.
It probably means nothing.
Maybe it means everything…
She stays where she sprawls, all loose limbs and long hair on my floor, rearranges her ankles into a cross-legged position and leans back against the base of my bed.
“What?” she says, accusingly but with a grin and a tilt of her head.
Her hair is wet, her face scrubbed clean. Damp patches bloom on the front of her t-shirt where strands of dark blonde are plastered, the water adding weight and dragging it straighter and longer than I’ve ever seen it.
I shrug. Grin back like I’m little more than a mirror on some kind of delay.
“I was bored,” she offers. An explanation I haven’t asked for.
“D’you want something to drink?”
She shakes her head loosely, no, curls her fists around a handful of hair and drags south slowly. Droplets of water darken the pale carpet and she scrubs her palm through it quickly, looks up, sheepish, like she’s not sure why she just did that.
I shrug again. Sink down ‘til I’m opposite her, my own back against the hollow wooden door she hadn’t bothered with.
“We’re stranded in a life-raft,” Lily states, her thumb nail between her teeth as she speaks. “We’re stranded in a life-raft and we’ve been drifting for three days…”
She’s lost me.
“We are? We have been?”
I struggle, sluggish; can’t seem to make sense of the apparent metaphor.
Everything means something. It must…
Her eyes roll dramatically in her head and, for a moment, she is grotesque, all blood-shot white and not breathing. But it passes before I can encode the image; ask me later and I’ll have no recollection of it.
She is beautiful.
Nothing less…
“Der,” she laughs. “Keep up. We’re stranded in a life-raft and we’re drifting at sea… Yes, and…”
Oh.
Half an endless summer and almost a whole school year have passed since we last lost countless hours wrapped inside her improvised fantasies. On our backs in the grass beneath my trampoline, the webbed mat above our heads dimpling the late afternoon sun into pin pricks that mottle our freshly freckled skin.
I could look at her back then, I remember.
Look at her without my insides shifting, shifting, shifting.
Look at her like it was nothing. Effortless.
“Yes.”
I breathe out on the single syllable; pretend, just for a beat, that I’m brave enough to test the ripples that push and pull between us now, “And… um…”
But I’ve never been brave, not really, and I’m not likely to start now, not with this.
“Yes, and...”
Not with her.
*
previously on...
introduction
jayus
the missing stair
in another castle
nobody can ride your back if your back's not bent
build a better mouse-trap
step on a crack, break your mother's back
*
Lily comes when the stars are out.
My head swims, clouded by all the clichés she skirts but never quite becomes. There’s tap, tap, tapping on my bedroom window, insistent but not aggressive, and when I shove the loose netting aside and move to lift the heavy pane a little higher, she’s got her finger across her lips, shhhhh, like the real intruder here is me.
Maybe she’s right.
She reaches one arm out, twists her fingers through mine, and the memory of hours before bounces along my spinal cord, a staccato beat that trips into double time when I take her weight and haul her up and over and through and down.
And down and down.
The sound of plovers standing guard on the lawn outside, and her breath, sawing between teeth and lips and across her tongue, compete for space inside my skull. She’s done this before, it means nothing.
It probably means nothing.
Maybe it means everything…
She stays where she sprawls, all loose limbs and long hair on my floor, rearranges her ankles into a cross-legged position and leans back against the base of my bed.
“What?” she says, accusingly but with a grin and a tilt of her head.
Her hair is wet, her face scrubbed clean. Damp patches bloom on the front of her t-shirt where strands of dark blonde are plastered, the water adding weight and dragging it straighter and longer than I’ve ever seen it.
I shrug. Grin back like I’m little more than a mirror on some kind of delay.
“I was bored,” she offers. An explanation I haven’t asked for.
“D’you want something to drink?”
She shakes her head loosely, no, curls her fists around a handful of hair and drags south slowly. Droplets of water darken the pale carpet and she scrubs her palm through it quickly, looks up, sheepish, like she’s not sure why she just did that.
I shrug again. Sink down ‘til I’m opposite her, my own back against the hollow wooden door she hadn’t bothered with.
“We’re stranded in a life-raft,” Lily states, her thumb nail between her teeth as she speaks. “We’re stranded in a life-raft and we’ve been drifting for three days…”
She’s lost me.
“We are? We have been?”
I struggle, sluggish; can’t seem to make sense of the apparent metaphor.
Everything means something. It must…
Her eyes roll dramatically in her head and, for a moment, she is grotesque, all blood-shot white and not breathing. But it passes before I can encode the image; ask me later and I’ll have no recollection of it.
She is beautiful.
Nothing less…
“Der,” she laughs. “Keep up. We’re stranded in a life-raft and we’re drifting at sea… Yes, and…”
Oh.
Half an endless summer and almost a whole school year have passed since we last lost countless hours wrapped inside her improvised fantasies. On our backs in the grass beneath my trampoline, the webbed mat above our heads dimpling the late afternoon sun into pin pricks that mottle our freshly freckled skin.
I could look at her back then, I remember.
Look at her without my insides shifting, shifting, shifting.
Look at her like it was nothing. Effortless.
“Yes.”
I breathe out on the single syllable; pretend, just for a beat, that I’m brave enough to test the ripples that push and pull between us now, “And… um…”
But I’ve never been brave, not really, and I’m not likely to start now, not with this.
“Yes, and...”
Not with her.
*
previously on...
introduction
jayus
the missing stair
in another castle
nobody can ride your back if your back's not bent
build a better mouse-trap
step on a crack, break your mother's back