Dialogue Final
She
is like plaque, that is what you say to her. Her face is obscured; hair
over her eyes and cheeks, her hands. Around the white cuffs she is
wearing even in the bed. Her life is a mess and though plaque badly
describes it, she understands. You go on.
There are filaments,
pieces of her life spinning away and then again, on you. Smaller and
smaller things she forgets to do, you say,
and she is not
careless towards you and you are not seeing carelessness when she is
doing this. It’s the effect that bothers you. You say for instance she
is crying. It not an offensive, and thankfully you have little to do
with it. She cries for herself. It is tiring to be in the midst.
She
takes your hand a little under the white blanket. She is white and
tired and tells you to stop coming towards her like that, the way
others do. No, you say, no there is nothing for you to run from, only
things to explain. Though you do not know who you are explaining to,
you tell her.
Her body lies on the blankets, moving a little
against her shirt and shoes. You push the hair away and press your palm
to her jaw. Her face yields to the side. It is warm. As much pressure
as you put into her face, she puts back into your hand. You feel
through her cheek the teeth and is she is somehow accepting this. Say
nothing again to her. There are reparations she must make, you think,
but she is tired, she says. She will sleep if she can and you need to
go.
But when trying to think her face rises, holds; she says things she is thinking inside her mouth.
She
does this to you, she knows, and pretends to not. It is not a terrible
thing to pretend. There is a train nearby and you feel her listening
for it. She says it is cruel to say things you know as if you didn't.
That loving is saying everything certainly. You bring her to you,
watching the surface of what she is saying hold and fall away. She
doesn’t know. She has already forgotten what she had to say. Is
studying something here, in your face, or perhaps she trying to find
something else, or perhaps suffering uninhibited for the first time,
for what you are not certain. Perhaps holding to knowledge of
forgetting, that is it. Forgetting, that takes hold of everything you
said and she said, and she is making saying things impossible.
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