On Knowledge and Being

On Knowledge and Being

It all starts when I say that I am afraid of the dark. They all care. But only you take me seriously.

We are young but not too young. We are uncertain but never more certain. We are not we yet; I am innocent and you are not.

There can't be a moon. We both know why but we pretend it is an accident. How you can't steal invisibility until it is blackness in its perfection, prime and primal. How my courage fails me until there is everything to fear.

I don't know if this is going according to plan. I don't know if I have a plan.

What I do know: You are pale. You are guiding. You are the moonlight that will not hurt me and you are unspeakable fear. You are deft you are slow you are everything you are nothing. You are the swiftest jumble of fog.

You are. Simply.

It drags forever and it is over too quickly. Your lips are on mine for an eternity. Fast-forward. Your grin, your radiance, your openness is suspended above me. Rewind. Slow motion. Your eyes and your hands. Me. Frame by frame. Discarded cotton blanket, Harlequin romance novel. Pure, novel smut. Us.

It is over too quickly.

Years and years of we. I memorize your outline in the dark and it is never hazy. Maybe I explore when I am less afraid of the dark and maybe I am the one suspended. Does it matter? The dark stretches into forever.

Until you kiss me. And you promise.

Time to press play.

A short eternity. It is the fullness and the paradox you created within me. My lips remain damp and always stained with us: blood and ecstasy and satisfaction and more blood. And tears. And many other things I could never name.

I am a child as I lock in place the years. Jigsaw puzzles - I was always good at them but nothing seems to fit when you leave.

You have stolen too many pieces for it to be intentional. I wait patiently.

-

He wouldn't go out during the day. He claimed he knew things they didn't.

Maybe he was right. There was no way for them to know. But still.

They tried to coax him out. Tried to take his hands and lead him. Maybe he was lost. Maybe his mind was gone. Maybe he didn't know where he was going anymore and maybe he needed a poke or a prod, some delicate help.

But he didn't want to be lead. He didn't want help. He didn't want the sun because dark held so much more.

He knew. He knew.

-

Bleach. Scrub, swish, bubbles and warm water that could almost seem like a comfort. But mostly I notice the bleach as it creeps throughout the bathroom and in my nostrils. I notice... because it's a muggle thing. Very un-you.

But it is whitehot in its scouring and it keeps things tidy. Clean slate. Devoid and an essence of forgetfulness. The walls are the same when I am through.

My bathroom: it could have been ours, maybe. If you hadn't followed him, if you had shared your thoughts with me. If I had taught you patience. If our kisses had meant anything; if our kisses hadn't worked like bleach. If you remembered your promise.

I could be mad at you. Call forth blazing anger, use it to burn your pictures, save the ashes in a silver canister, let it sink to the bottom of the ocean, whitehot. Or not. Neither really matters.

It could have been ours. Maybe.

I continue to scrub the walls. The toilet. The mirror. I flick the light switch off and on and off. I turn the tap. I stop at the tub like it might mean something because it was a sacred place so many years ago, where each falling drop of moisture meant something sacrosanct. It wasn't all water.

The showerhead. I could use it to ward away intruders. 'The Dark Lord regained power and things are going to get worse, much worse.' I could use it to bash my brains in.

But that could taint the symbolism of what this is. Pity.

The bleach is making me woozy. I dream that I hear something; I dream that my feet make a noise as I pace back and forth, clack-clack on the tile. No: that's real. But I think I hear heavier footsteps in the hall and I think they stop in the doorway and I think there is a click. The light is on again.

You are there. Or maybe you aren't, but the bleach doesn't distort my vision so I know you are.

I am on the floor; I am on my knees. Do you see the scarf in my hair, how it covers the grey? Do you see the bags under my eyes, the dullness of my skin, how it covers what you've already seen, what you created? Do you see anything anymore? Your eyes are so dead.

You take the rag I hand you. You are beside me, scrubbing.

The bleach wipes away the whitehot remembering, the mistakes. Clean slate.

-

He didn't know anything. Didn't think anything. Didn't see anything. But there was everything.

He should have been named Teiresias, because he saw the future. He saw it all until he couldn't see anything and it all changed. So he stopped looking but it didn't matter anyway. He had lost the power to see in the dark.

They left him alone, mostly. He had stopped looking but that didn't mean he stopped being. He knew there were motions and he knew how to follow through. He knew and he didn't.

Knowing didn't mean anything, when it came down to it. He knew the sun rose after night and he knew before the sun rose it was dark. It was dark and things were right but only if he wasn't alone. Or something. It was all a muddle but the main thing was he knew. But he didn't understand.

-

I am trying to scoop ice cream out of the carton. I am trying, because you like chocolate ice cream and it's so warm outside. But it's hard. The sun melts the rest of the world but it doesn't melt this damn ice cream.

A bowl hits the floor. It's blue and not glass and empty. I almost wish it had ice cream in it and the ice cream would splatter so I'd have something to clean up, something I am capable of doing.

It's so stupid. I am old. I am crying. I am old and because I stupidly can't scoop ice cream I am crying.

You see and you come near. You, and your hair, and your eyes, and your lips, and your perfection. You hold me still with the way you are.

There's a smile. 'Having trouble?'

Long fingers. You pry the other bowl from my grasp, let it fall on the floor. I lean back into whatever you are.

'It's hard.' I am a whine. I am your wine and we both know it. Your eyes drink.

'Life's hard.'

Hands on my chest, your lips in my hair and what I think might be a smile. Your patronizing is silly and sad; it makes me content and causes the impulses in my brain to misfire and... I am rambling.

'I know. The Dark Lord and the being scared and the nighttime and the plots and the uncertainty and the bloody- ice- cream!'

Laugh. It is something I almost don't understand and I walk away angrily. I fumble with the screen door and I make my way outside and I sit in the beach chair, multicoloured hard plastic. It doesn't smell of sand or sea salt.

The sun is fiery red and the air is chilly and I shudder. It is involuntary.

Suddenly you fill my vision, you and the ice cream and two fake-silver-coated spoons. All I see is the Dark Lord.

'Well let's take care of one thing at a time, shall we?'

You push me over and we curl on the beach chair and the sun softens the ice cream. We eat it from the carton anyway, sticky and sweet and sultry as your lips in the setting sun.

-

It didn't really happen that way. There were fabrications, and things weren't always so perfectly tender. But that's how it was to him. That summed up his life.

He didn't buy ice cream anymore. He didn't buy bleach or cotton sheets or even candles that reminded him of sunset. He didn't buy beach chairs to put on the porch.

Instead he sat on the back steps with his face turned up to the sun and his eyes open. Every night. And he let obscurity fall as a backdrop and he took in the blackness and the vague familiarity he couldn't quite place and he smiled. Every night.

There was something about the end of a day. There was something about the way he couldn't see past the setting sun and trace the contours of his future as he used to. There was something.

But it didn't scare him the way seeing used to. Seeing had fixed things. Seeing had given him the hope of a promise of a something.

Seeing had led him to misunderstand.

But now he understood perfectly. He understood the past. He understood the romance. He understood the kisses and the fingers and the mistakes and the promises and the clean slate perfection. He understood everything.

He understood that there was nothing.