Chapter fifteen
Stephanie
knew one boy whom she had related with in her early childhood. His name was
Falcon. Meeting eyes with him felt like staring into the workings of a clock.
He was the only boy that she ever could relate with.
She
would meet with him on a sidewalk that ran through their apartment
neighbourhood, back when she lived in his apartment neighbourhood. They would
meet at random, always. She preferred it that way, and he agreed, although he
never said it.
They
met in the shade of two opposite apartment buildings one day. A cement sidewalk
ran from the playground down to the parking lot that lay between every cluster
of apartment buildings.
The
Sun was setting. The sky was a vivid and terribly tenacious blue that was
descending into deeper indigo. The last rays of light still pierced it.
She
could still remember his eyes. He had the eyes that other children accused of
changing colour. They appeared at times blue and, at others, hazel. She
observed how particular and ornate they were. The slits in the iris,
circumventing the perfectly circular pupil like the increments on her father's
watch or the ridges on the rim of a quarter, were interrupted by vivid blotches
of a poisonous, gorgeous nebulae that reminded her of the tornadoes on the
surface of Jupiter.
In
between, the blue segued into green seamlessly. Yet some days it looked brown.
She always held her breath when they talked, yet she spoke much. His eyes
always looked straight at her. Usually there was no differentiation between his
eyes and hers. There were words, and they were sometimes in a female voice and
sometimes in a male voice that synchronised with his face and its gestures. He
would grin often. He was a part of their environment, and the fading of the day
light was met with no friction or restlessness. It changed as though it were a
second hand running along the rim of his eyes.
The
same eyes looked on as the morning light turned to daylight, becoming a bleak
white. Time seemed to be reversed as he spoke, as though, while the light of
one day faded, behind it, another, white, light set in, bleak as that morning
light.
Sometimes
there would be a lapse in their conversation. She would find herself breathing
out. The exhalation was always followed by a pang of gentle pain, and she tried
to make it less bearable.
He
noted the interruptions. He would simply look on, suppressing the desire to
look around, waiting for her to speak again. Sometimes he would find something
to say that would immediately catch her interest, and the seconds would
seemlessly again begin to move.
Time
was not an entity during their pauses. She would simply look down at her skin
and observe how pale it appeared. Yet she would feel a strange sense of
identification with it. Her flesh felt as though it had its own tone. She would
have felt pride in it were there not Falcon living in her community.
Dm.A.A.
No comments:
Post a Comment