30 052. Deep in Thought

Everything is fire.

I looked at him as he was deep in thought. He didn’t see me. I had been observing him for some time. His nose, his chin and above all his eyes. He seemed troubled. He had looked my way a couple of times, but I felt like he had been looking through me. I wanted so desperately to come closer to him. I started to dream and the landscapes that floated by in my mind all got mixed up. That short time we had been sitting there I had already built myself full with dreams. I wondered what it would be like talking to him. I got up and went over to him, I sat down next to him and asked him about his coffee or about his drawing or said something stupid like hey, relax I’m not gonna ask you to draw me as a mermaid. But of course as I blushed with intense fire just thinking about it, I didn’t do any of that. I just sat there and admired him from a distance, it was pretty short. Way to short for me to feel comfortable staring at him. I had sat down on a small table close to a booth. It was the only table available that was a two seated one. I didn’t want to take up too much space. Notably annoyed he had sat down at the boot. He spread his things and books out on the table. He didn’t seem to worry at all about taking up too much space. He ordered a coffee and only that. Black he said and the waitress seemed to know this already. They exchanged a couple of friendly lines and she smiled. She touched her hair, twinned it and asked him a couple of stupid things like can you draw me as a mermaid.

“You don’t know what it s like to be me” she thinned her eyes and looked at me intently. Every night for the past week she had come to me in my dreams. Every night it was the same. She took me by the hand, led me to the garden. We walked and I grew increasingly dizzier from her touch. Finally everything but the back of her hand was a complete blur. Then she let go and I stood there for some time, swaying back and forth. When I finally touched the ground again and my soul had been returned to me, I looked at her. She smiled that smile, “3 minutes” she said “Don’t let go of me with your eyes, keep them right here” she said and nailed me down with her eyes. I got dizzy again. Surroundings blurring out and she sucked me in to that horrible scene again where she got drowned by lava, she was buried and burned alive. After the three minutes had passed she let go of me and again I was swaying. When I got a hold of myself she was still smiling. She reached into her chest, between the ribs and pulled out the black pulsating ball. That’s when I realize that we are standing on a hill. The moor stretching out around us. For every time we returned the ground seemed to be increasingly pulsating, as if every black ball she pulled out had gotten buried there in those barren lands. She left the ball by my feet and turned away slowly. That’s when I stopped her this time. I grabbed her sleeve lightly between my thumb and index finger. The last thing I wanted to do was to touch her when I wasn’t supposed to. She disliked being touched. She aggressively disliked it. I never got an explanation to why. I wasn’t sure that she knew. She kept repeating it, ‘I don’t like being touched’. She said it smiling or pulled back, she said it jokingly or with a slight agitated tremble on her voice, as if she was ready to bite your hand of if she had to. “Do you even know, anything about me at all” “I know you don’t like to be touched” “Then please get your hand off me” “Alright, I’m sorry, but please stay, talk to me will you? Tell me what’s going on. Why wont you take my calls, why wont you just… I want you to come back” “It doesn’t matter, nothing matters anymore, don’t you understand?” “No, no I really don’t, that’s why I want you to talk to me” “Do you even care about my feelings? You say you want me around, but did you ever consider what it does to me?” “Of course I care, what are you even talking about? What do you mean what it ‘does’ to you. Have I done something wrong. Im not sure what I did, but if I did something I’m sorry. Wont you tell me?” “Let…. Go… of me” I hesitated, opened my mouth but closed it again. There was something in her tone. If I didn’t let go of her sleeve, I risked having my hand cut off. So I sighed and let go. My arm fell helplessly down to my side. Alright I thought. Ok then. She walked away. And same as always I stood there watching her figure disappear and reappear as the hills rolled. When she was gone I sat down and looked at the little black pulsating ball. It slowly lost its vitality and the vibrations calmed. Like waves evening out after a storm. I sat there until it was completely still and the threads shooting out of it wrapped themselves tightly around the surface. It grew cold, hard and, even tho it seemed impossible, even darker. I reached out and lifted it up. It was too heavy for me to lift with one hand only. I put it in my lap and looked at it, just looked at it for some time. I eventually fell asleep with it in my lap. In my dream I closed my eyes and imagined you walking back. Walking slowly back over the hills. Before you reached me I would have fallen asleep, and I would be dreaming in my dream. Then while I was sleeping there, on that hill with nothing but the moor of barren land around me, you would reach me. You would sit down by my sleeping dream body. For some reason I would have my hair grown out. Perhaps because I knew you liked it that way. You put your hand on my forehead, as to check if I had a fever, then you would run your fingers through my hair.