With You, My Silence

I was lost in the hum and whir of the floor buffer--two pills deep, ten thoughts in. The night was young and the rooms were bare. Just me in the office polishing floors that didn't want to be clean. I accepted my place at the bottom of the pyramid; I forgave my lack of ambition. What was life but cleaning one spill after another anyway? At least I had some peace and quiet.

But it was about to be disturbed.

It happened one night when I went to switch off a light and found the room occupied. Odd, since employees never stayed after hours--hell, that was the only reason I even took this job to begin with. Talking to them was awkward--I was self-conscious of my voice and found it exhausting trying to tune their voices in among the various clicks and scratches and bumps and whirs that populate any public space.

But now--with that whoever there--which I could see now was a woman, even worse--I had to be conscious of her presence, which drifted out in a wave of intoxicating fog, slipping into every nook and cranny, purple poisoned perfume sweeping and stirring in giant waves that crashed against the shores of my mind. I would never be free to dwell in the squalor of my imagination while this suck-up employee was here.

So I decided to make my way up the other floors first. By the time I came back she was gone. I crept inside to switch off the light--

BANG.

I jumped so high I almost hit the ceiling. Spinning around-- my heart beating a million miles a minute--nothing?--Then spinning back to the room--empty.

The doors here didn't just close on their own, let alone bang. What was happening? I took a few more steps over to the workbench where the woman had been: the computer was still on but nothing in particular was running. Anyway I must have just knocked the door myself I'm thinking, turn to leave when--

I am met by a vision of pure beauty--as if struck by Aphrodite herself: tawny eyebrows under brunette bangs, the hair running down her shoulders in a luxuriant mane; her tear shaped eyes of jade, penetrating me like javelins of ice.

The words coming out of her lips I cannot hear--her full, red lips glistening, turned up at the ends, inscrutable, unreadable, intoxicating--complimenting her straight, curved nose, those high cheeks moved along with her every luscious, inaudible word. Words washed away by green seas, the glow off her eyes the horizon, a distant sun that's dawn or dusk, and the curve of the sea which bends and swirls down the taut skin of her gleaming neck to chest: a dizzy wave.

Her eyes ask me something I cannot hear through the world. I just nod blankly. It doesn't matter what: I would agree to anything just the same.

Taking my hand, she drags me with her, away from the shuddering machines, the humming refrigeration... into a recess, has me stand there. What? The ringing in my ears dies down--and her immaculate hands land lightly on my chest.. Green waters leak from her pupils to mine.. A stream, a glue, a bond. Her mouth slightly opens on a smile, that speaks promises that must be broken and cannot be real. And a warmth through the hard surface of my skin.. Under my flesh I feel it.. Phasing. Fading.. Wait!

Her hand is passing through me now.. I must be seeing double, except I can feel it, under my overalls, then through my shirt, my skin.. and now her hand is vanishing and I feel it INSIDE ME.. it's only for a second, maybe less.. but the second is an eternity, an infinity of the most excruciating pain and unbridled pleasure I have ever known.. she grips my every pain and pleasure receptor at once and squeezes.. hair on end, skin melts, matter ceases: THE LIMITS OF THE SKIN BROKEN--flesh is flesh within without and bonded through feel her feeling wave, a wave, from peak to trough, her lips from nowhere on my own, I taste her from the inside, face collapsing, see through leaking eyes--the chatter of the machines, hmming, chrning, not word tween us spoken, somehow all thoughts convey through the meat.

...It's then I crumble: creeping sadness steaming off the surface of my heart like hot rain from asphalt.. swimming through your gushing blood I feel a warmth, implosion.. you do not reject that darkness, it is me with your own self, your body, being, suffocating on your breath, drunk and drinking from within. Your teeth your tongue and your ribbed insides swallow me in pieces.. our leg-locked limbs are loosely tangled.. faces falling into kiss.. consuming, no, creating.. every breath expelled, inhaled, in every past a present, gift. There's no beginning, no tomorrow, up from bottom, top from down: a bustling crowd of butterflies are swarming, stirring in the gut.. regenerating juices which had never cause to froth.

This is an original composition between us now.. Wet paints splatter on the inside of our love-made matter.. Hollow forms close in eclipsing suns.. Space wrung out of stars and fields.. Hidden infinity between your searching eyes.. Fuck me fuck it all.. Touch you through the tight cloth clinging to your breast, the silken slip which reveals your knees.. leaves scuttle, blown through closed windows, scatter at our feet. Stay standing still.. tanned limber legs lean into me, breaths entwined like limbs and leaves.. like twisted trees leaning lazy with ease.. which flicks your sleek brown hair in breeze.. and past the sun baked streets, a rip, a dawn, a rise.. a whole night passes, swimming in your mind's eyes...

Something like hope has stripped the discomfort which had been knitted into me deepest tissues. It is a treaty between the warring factions of a mind against itself. As if all sensations of the moment converted the tortured nights preceding it into vigils with a purpose--and it unstrapped me from the chair of my own capture. Sinking into a salt bath, the aching of a sore heart soothed, I float to the surface in a new skin...

I call her Silence. She is the feeling I had lost.

Is she mirage or ghost, a psychic creature created in the limits of sheer desperation? Or does her existence find purchase in reality, in some sense or another? Can I allow myself to trust in this impossible sensation? I must. I have nothing else.

So I search for her each night in the dank corners of this nocturnal edifice. I long for her touch at the end of strenuous shifts. In my darkest hours her face flickers before me and I breath green again.

But to my dismay, the dream always ends...

It's okay, because I know she still waits for me beyond the stock and rote, which keeps me locked in a straitjacket of the senses. She holds the key to that strangling suit between her parted lips, and in the inward bend of her wide, feline eyes.

Walk with me through this shared mind, hand-in-hand, like it's our own personal gallery... We watch on white walls, old thoughts reify to harmless prints in old frames. We admire, laugh a little, sip mint tea by the gift shop.

My energies cease their attack on me. They become boundless and swirling; forces which before turned me inside out, now congealing into the curve of her hips, the weightiness of her breast. The ​vicious lashes of longing's whip have dyed into dark shoulder-length strands, and agony's knife is a gentle finger to caress my cheek.

We sit face-to-face at the limits of mind and on the bodily verge of sanity. The night always draws near. The night I spend with you, my Silence.