...we will burn together, we two...inseparable bindings only to be unlaced by
tongues of purest flame--elegantly wrenching pulling straining in the sweetest
ecstatic throes of agony--and even then my fingers will not unknit themselves
from yours....
The girl's hands are eloquent, even in their motionlessness, suspended in mid-thought at her throat: delicate, pale, inviting...they say to me, "Gather us up,
enclose us forever in your palms. Kiss us as gently as you would fine and
fragile porcelain." Her hair, swept back from her face, completes the line of
her chin tilted down. She does not look at him. Or at least not for long.
He, likewise, is submerged in...contemplation? Melancholy? His hair streams,
dark droplets, in front of his eyes, concealing thoughts; a hat casts more
hiding shadows across his brow. Hands engaged in the sacrament of pen,
paper, and coffee cup, the strands go untouched in the darkness pooling
around his eyes. He scratches away at the leaf of paper, eyes darting up
occasionally for a precious, momentary glimpse. The girl's hands have left
her throat and are pulling words to pen to paper slowly, methodically.
...and i will watch you watching me in the fire's glow, your desperate eyes
saying nothing now, peaceful among the flames. and i will watch a single tear
slowly make its way down the ivory of your face, testament to the brevity of the
moment...
I watch her hands move across the book; the tips of her fingers spilling
volumes into the lifeless wood pulp. I watch him watching her--how
studiously he sketches--and I know he traces each line of her face in his mind
before he ever brings it out onto paper; he has no need to look.
And I am jealous; jealous of their silence, their kinship, their immediate
understanding. I envy her delicate fingers and the mind that sketches them
again and again. I am jealous of the pictures in his mind, jealous of the words
she is thoughtfully, carefully bringing into to being.
...the moment shall pass. i see you lying so still next to me: you blend into the air.
the flames are gone so suddenly...or...perhaps we no longer feel them here.
funny that death by fire should be so cold...
And, staring across the restaurant, through the haze of smoke and early
morning, for a brief and passing moment I am jealous of fire, too.
Erica Vess, 6/27/97
