Highway

Dusk, the highway. The drone of cars speeding past drowns all possibility of conversation. Not that there will be much, given their track record at exchanging ideas. She glances at him and takes in the all-too familiar, semi-permanent frown, the set of grim lines that make up his mouth. His eyes are on the road, his left hand resting on the wheel.

She keeps her mouth shut, wondering how long the ride home will take.

"Try to be quiet out there. I'm tired, and it's gonna be a long drive." He, after turning the ignition on, several minutes earlier.

So there she sits, an obedient puppy. Glued to her spot, counting billboards.

Lost

Red liquor, a warm breeze, orange-tinted chairs. The evening has turned into a slow dance. People are asking for ice.

She is tipsy and drowning in a pool of music and low, inaudible chatter, still mildly conscious that what she is doing is trying to keep afloat in the crowd of twenty-somethings she had so unceremoniously found herself, some hours earlier.

Loud cheering erupts at the first strains of a popular rock song, and she turns to look at the band. Her eyes meet his and they both smile. She remembers watching his fingers fly, light and sure, over the guitar strings, and realizes she'd lost track of him when the alcohol started quickly working its way through her nerves.

He nods, and she wants to believe she knows what that nod means. They are both anachronisms here, after all; both lost, in some shared, unutterable way. The bench he's sitting on seems too short for him, somehow, and she giggles and raises her glass to him.

For a moment, her head feels clear, and her smile creeps from her lips to her soul, and she is asking, could I, perhaps now, risk my silence for your keys and strings? A promise of other moonlit conversations gleams from afar; in the muted distance, soft music waits.

Ah, but the moment, like most other moments, darts into a blur of bygones. A waiter asks if she wants a refill, and she hands her glass to him. While he's pouring the drink, she looks down at her hands. Still slightly intoxicated, she finds herself back in the subdued safety of obtuseness, where questions so often get lost in tangents, and answers, though found, are seldom ever the ones to the questions we ask.

By the time she raises her head again, he is no longer looking.

Closure: Movement

She looked up, her gaze fixing on me. Her eyes had a guarded look to them, which soon, however, assumed an intensity that she, perhaps, could not feign. It felt to me like she was boring a hole through the canvas, piercing past the oils with her stare, asking, is it true? Are you there?

A shout was frozen somewhere in my throat and I struggled inwardly, straining against the confines of my prison, feeling more trapped now, more than ever, now that I had begun to, once again, wrestle with I knew not what. It was like this, too, the first time I regained consciousness and found myself where I was. Only now, I struggled more fiercely—against these unknown walls, against immobility, against despair—because I knew that someone had somehow found out where I was.

Did prayers still get heard in this day and age?

She rose from the chair and walked toward me, her steps wide, determined. She stopped just near enough so that I could hear her soft, deep breathing.

She laid a hand on my arm, running her eyes all over me. I knew that her hand was on my arm because I saw it there. This lack of feeling pained me the most. So, I braced myself, giving it one final, solid push, as if physical effort would free me from the incomprehensible state I was in. It was almost painful, the strain; so that when I felt I had reached the end of my strength, I eased back, slowly, exhaling the tightness.

She was so near. I could see just exactly how beautiful her eyes were as they looked searchingly at me, how they were like whirlpools I wanted to go to pieces in, how her gaze was like a spell that held me, as if her eyes were arms wrapped tightly around me, yes, and I, wretched being, longed to bury myself in her aliveness, to feel her, palpable, in my hands, to be palpable in her hands.

I felt myself weakening, the longer the seconds ticked away; felt, more painfully now, the helplessness that I had long ago learned to come to terms with.

Oh, God, that she had come so near, so near.

So near.

I felt that I could no longer bear it, and I prepared to give up.

The jolt was indescribable, then, when I began to feel, very faintly, the feather-lightness of her touch as she trailed her thumb along my hand.