Around the time when what he had previously considered his life began to disintegrate, the electric juggernauts of spring rattled the plains with pounding rains and rumbling. Frosty white vapor swelled with energy in the vast indigo expanse, rising in the furnace of the new season. Aflame in sunset, the chaos gave form to the voltaic hell hovering thousands of feet above a landscape that refused topography. A plain so void of description, at times he wondered if the auburn and blond of it were the actual sky while he remained anchored somehow between there and the endless tracts of storms.
Just before the collapse, he had enjoyed that certain level of confidence equal to most men his age regardless of education or position. He claimed a certain wisdom derived from his share of triumph and failure. He was divorced. They had a child now nine years old. He told people the poisonous coupling was the result of a dupe but he knew that wasn’t true. He had recognized it as a poison and he drank it.
In the beginning, he somehow craved the suffering that accompanied his marriage. He relished with silent indignation the shape of her insanity. He searched for reasons to lie. Lying about trivial things became his orbital vehicle. He could stay above her at a safe distance from their predictable volatility until finally she hacked away the lofty tethers of each lie and one by one they reached their points-of-no-return and were scattered like so much smoldering debris she rummaged through whenever it fancied her to do so. She collected the best of them and treasured them as mementos especially in the years after his disappearance when she needed the nostalgia of their broken pieces to remind her of a time when she might have been in love with him.
From the moment her family saw the fragile nature of the attraction, they fought marriage with every possible argument. They cited his proclivity to flee. He had already left her on several occasions in the brief months before the wedding. Once during a shouting match at a Thanksgiving dinner and again in a coffee shop for what seemed to lack any reason but he would later recall with reticence that his flight was the result of a horrifying glimpse of his destiny. In the lukewarm aroma of roasted beans and stale upholstery, in the subtle domesticity of their positions at the table, in the his-and-hers of the very light reflected in their eyes, he discovered the place where they would exist together… alone… as one… and he shuddered at its banality.
Nevertheless, he always came back. And she always accepted him. They did feel for one another. They felt a mutual empathy. They could look into one another’s eyes. They enjoyed the sex intensely. She had been married and divorced but since then found neither anything nor anyone who could conjure this height of feeling. Yet, even with all these positives, when they calculated their complete sum to equal a semblance of love, they were rounding up.
Just before the collapse, he had enjoyed that certain level of confidence equal to most men his age regardless of education or position. He claimed a certain wisdom derived from his share of triumph and failure. He was divorced. They had a child now nine years old. He told people the poisonous coupling was the result of a dupe but he knew that wasn’t true. He had recognized it as a poison and he drank it.
In the beginning, he somehow craved the suffering that accompanied his marriage. He relished with silent indignation the shape of her insanity. He searched for reasons to lie. Lying about trivial things became his orbital vehicle. He could stay above her at a safe distance from their predictable volatility until finally she hacked away the lofty tethers of each lie and one by one they reached their points-of-no-return and were scattered like so much smoldering debris she rummaged through whenever it fancied her to do so. She collected the best of them and treasured them as mementos especially in the years after his disappearance when she needed the nostalgia of their broken pieces to remind her of a time when she might have been in love with him.
From the moment her family saw the fragile nature of the attraction, they fought marriage with every possible argument. They cited his proclivity to flee. He had already left her on several occasions in the brief months before the wedding. Once during a shouting match at a Thanksgiving dinner and again in a coffee shop for what seemed to lack any reason but he would later recall with reticence that his flight was the result of a horrifying glimpse of his destiny. In the lukewarm aroma of roasted beans and stale upholstery, in the subtle domesticity of their positions at the table, in the his-and-hers of the very light reflected in their eyes, he discovered the place where they would exist together… alone… as one… and he shuddered at its banality.
Nevertheless, he always came back. And she always accepted him. They did feel for one another. They felt a mutual empathy. They could look into one another’s eyes. They enjoyed the sex intensely. She had been married and divorced but since then found neither anything nor anyone who could conjure this height of feeling. Yet, even with all these positives, when they calculated their complete sum to equal a semblance of love, they were rounding up.
Edit 11.1.2018