[seemoreglass48]: 636.Prose.crop circles

This was written awhile ago. It needs some tweaking.


    Crop circle lines were drawn in her head. Foreign, mysterious, and leaving a deeper mark than the ridges on her fingertips. She continually felt as if light dust had caught in her eyes. Her vision blurred and the world around her was always fuzzy, unclear—her hands just past her narrow sight. Glancing at them turned up, leaning against the windowsill, she could see the rings of oil you left. Dizzying marks. Staring until she burned and had to turn away. Like a lost bird in winter her eyes were hazy, murky, overcast. Broken, bitter wind catching inside the twisted cracks of her lips.
    She was heavy—hung down with the weight of her tired bones. The rushing blood, the thick marrow crawling through tunnels. Her hands shook like branches in a coming storm. She was flushed, confusingly dazzled, and wishing she was feeling nothing. Insensitivity. You had gained that. She wanted to catch it like a disease passing fast on doorknobs, between cold fingers, distant lips. Instead she was bent like a paper doll stuffed into a young girl’s pocket. The crayon wax crackling with wear and careless fingernails. Frayed and torn around the edges. So tired. Manipulated. Crumpled into a single tiny memory. Maybe it was the pocket lint that clouded her vision.
    She was your ransom note. The newspaper cut out letters slapped onto a blank page. The last resort at saving you. Quickly you remembered how easily it can be thrown into the trashcan. How soap gets rid of the ink stains on your hands.
    She is the part that sinks to the bottom. Her mind sinks like the ink stains, and her reflection in the water reminds her of you. Of the look you last gave her. The goodbye shiny and fragile like crisp aluminum foil. It left a metallic taste in her mouth. It lingered on her tongue and hasn’t left. The taste that makes her stomach sour, her lungs dry and cold. 
    The piercing of winter seeped underneath her fingernails. Like a needle threatening, hiding just beneath the white part. When you press too hard the color escapes, and white fills the spaces. She’d like to keep the color, but sometimes the weight hits too hard, and she can’t get past the contour of white bleeding into her hands, the circulation dying with the oncoming cold. You are her windburn. Taking out the moisture from her face and adding to the shiver down her spine. All she can do now is wait for the snow.
    You wanted her to understand. You wished she would forgive, maybe even forget. But for her the nights were too long, and dreading them took more energy than she had. Everything was too knotted for her to undo, and the last thing she wanted was to give you what she had left. Maybe if you used the word never, she would come back…
    Never had happened to her too much. It was manipulating, churning, and smelled like dirt smeared under her nose. It would not be the decision. It would not take hold on her again. Only emotion, God, and the season whispering in her ear could help you now.
    You say you don’t dwell. Not like her in that drain, lingering in murky water until her eyes can no longer see. You become clear. You become aware. And you don’t know where your life is going. She has told you before that she dreams in circular repetitions. By her words you understood colors. She smelled like yellow.
    Memories stick to the bottom of her rib cage. Where her skinniness reveals a slight line. There she doesn’t have to see them. You wished you could take your thumb, one last time, and peel them off, rolling them against your fingers. They would feel warm, like wax, the last drips falling off a beloved candle. Though, too late, it had hardened, and healed, and you suddenly realized there was no way to get it back.
    Days of clarity continued to come around the bend. Maybe now it would be easier. Maybe now awkwardness wouldn’t form like bile at the back of your throat. You hadn’t anticipated her strength, or the force at which it was thrown at you. You hadn’t guarded yourself for sour words, for stabbing accusations, or the finale that left you wishing…maybe you should have been better.
    She was warm curled beneath her favorite quilt. Tracing it softly with her fingers, she began to smile, dimples showing through, a relieved happiness flowing throughout her body. Things would never be the same.
    And she liked it that way.