Saturday, August 18, 2007

What Is In The Cards?

She wondered if this was an omen, that disembodied voice calling out, "No new messages." Before, the little man had been a harbinger of good tidings of great joy. Now he was still as the tomb.
Did familiarity breed contempt? Was there a casualness resulting from increased availability? She rejected the question before it was even fully formed as irrelevant to her life. How increased? A few more hours here and there? More telephone time? The increase in time they allotted each other directly correlated to increased stress and strife in their real world lives. Ergo, all good negated.
She closed the laptop. If she couldn't see the blank screen, it didn't exist. Keep your head in the sand at all times possible and even at times impossible. Ignore what you will. The world will go on with or without your consent and say so.
Say so. The things he said to her. She drummed her fingers on the laptop. Open it? Check mail again? No. Leave it be. For now. Remember their last conversation. Caring without tipping over into solicitous platitudes or falsehood. Patient. Balanced. It was foreign to each of them. They'd never... Or never in a million years anyway. This newborn life to walk through, so tentative after eons of familiar. Uncharted, after sleepwalking with eyes open only when the tension and anger boiled over. Which it did. Often. Too often.
To live and know your life was wrong, but not see a way to fix it was painful. Wake to hopelessness, sorry to be awake. Filled with such despair that the nightly prayer had morphed into "If I should die before I wake... Let me die before I wake. Please let me die." And now this. This quiet. The very thought of which made her smile. Even feeling ignored, she smiled. Pulled the ugly green paisley blanket higher on her shoulders.
Her cell chirped. And his name flashed on the screen.

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