He Would Leave Her On The Road And Watch Her Die

I would rather be a tree! And Not Make Children with Thin Hair!

She could not go upstairs. Her skin was still too uncovered from him, too revealing of the parts of her body that were not toned like his. At times this could be overlooked, but at moments such as these when they had raised their voices (Never interrupt me! Never interrupt anyone!), any contact of skin or body would send her bumping her head against the hard gravel ground as though she were hanging, being dragged. It has been too long since I have been reprimended. Far too long since my skin has been punished for the sins it has made.

"You are pale," he told her when the weather uncovered her legs. "You are pale and it is ugly." She knew he believed that this was true. That her paleness made him afraid of all the imperfections her womanhood might possess, might imply to future offspring he planned on feeding through her body.

He chose her because she was perfect, because he couldn't figure out her mind, because he knew she could not be afraid of him (his madness), when it came climbing out of her own limbs.

Strange people (strangers) write things down to keep them from the atrocities that make them mad, Because Noone Else is listening.

His father was mad. This was known, but never proven. He walked along the street, and then back to his house and he rarely said a word, not because people were out of reach but because people never came close into speaking distance. She could feel his father, breathe him, from six blocks away, know that he was there, wonder what he thought, wonder what might be said when it was realized that daftness was common between them. I wonder what might be said if one was caught bathing in water like this, she thought.

His brother ran away on drugs, an experiment that tested him also when he let it. They spent many a night in other worlds together, letting silences become laughter, misunderstanding become false understanding; a magnetism that held them together. The other night, she saw him at the bar and he ran his arms across her back. She could feel his large hand and she wanted to stay there but he had come with someone else.

When they made love they were hush, letting the silences act like breathes between them that communicated their desires. He chose her because he believed that when they were silent, when they stared at each other like children awake, but born dumb, when they made love, he knew what her voice and straight staring eyes would have said. He would be what he thought she told him, while she wondered what he thought she was thinking and improvised from his movements.

Often they did not touch each other, only touched themselves, with him kissing her on the forehead when the act was done. And always they acted when they finished, like they had never known each other, that this first meeting, again, was shocking enough to let the silence lead them away from the obvious indifference that always settled, that became proven between the rocks he laid down when they first moved in.

There are enough rocks here, she once thought, that if I rubbed them together long enough, I could make an island. There are enough rocks here that noone would notice if my skin and my blood became parts of the surface. Once she asked him, how do you think this setting implies us?

It changes us into characters we avoid, he replied. A beautiful woman cannot survive without her words, and I would rather go mad trying to keep her, than let her go.