Work Text:
It’s dark, and it’s quiet, tonight.
The room is dark and quiet.
I am full of light; I cannot contain the sound within me,
The thrumming of my heart.
But I’ll spare you and the quiet night.
I’ll write
Caitlyn huffs through her nose, shakes off the embarrassment of writing simple, truthful words by flicking her pen between her fingers– back, forth, back forth, back-forth back-forth-
Her eyes drift to the woman in her bed. A vague shadow in the sheets, that’s all, rising and falling like anything alive would. Everything is varying levels of the same color– dark blacks, lighter blacks, strips of white moonlight that peek through the sheer curtain. The window is open, and the fabric flutters in time with Caitlyn’s heart, she thinks; ebbing and flowing, twisting around for no reason at all, in response to such a simple thing as warm air rising, or someone being alive.
I heard father say poetry is a practice,
And that it isn’t something that can be learned, only felt,
And I have no idea what I’m doing.
She presses harshly to the paper, as if her pen could break walls – four of them – with one stroke. The ink runs thick and dark, swallowing up Gs and making a black hole out of a period.
You don’t either. I know you won’t admit it.
(Admit it. For me, do something for me, anything-
Admit it)
I’ll admit;
I didn’t think you’d stay.
I don’t know how far you are, even now.
I can’t make words rhyme or have reason,
But I can’t let them stay in my mind.
Not these ones.
Not the things you do to me .
She glances up again, checks the figure in the bed. A lump to the left, one arm- no, she’s not imagining that- one arm stretched out to the other side of the bed. She blinks, just to be sure, and it’s true when her eyes are open just as when they’re closed. There’s a woman there, reaching for her after only a week of something , after a week of telling her friends (herself, and the woman in her bed) it’s nothing, it couldn’t be .
Admit it.
And then she presses the ends of the book together, soundless, and drifts across the room like her dance teacher taught her in elementary school– muscles tight, toes light. It goes like one-two-three-four, and then she’s at her own bedside, staring at Vi.
She tries not to touch her too much– they’ve been trying not to touch. A brush of a hand here, as they pass papers, or the press of their legs as they huddle around a computer. She didn’t fall asleep in Vi’s arms in that she didn’t fall asleep, and she was in Vi’s arms, somehow, even though they’d been trying not to touch. Sleep breaks barriers, and Vi had rolled over, pulled her close. Caitlyn thought she would burst.
Even now, climbing back in, she feels tight with all the things in her chest. Vi’s hand rests lazily beneath her neck, and she shoves it away. It’s distracting.
~~~
I don’t know what I expect.
Knowing things like that is not my style,
I’m not built for it-
I’m built to hope, never to know.
Touch me in the dark, and I’ll turn it to a spark-
Look, that one rhymed.
Caitlyn breathes out slow, draws in morning air. The chill of night clings to it. It stops short of waking her up– the night clings to her bones like it does to the air, pulls her down into a slow bloodbeat, a deep-breath kind of rhythm. The sky is still purple and blue, not yet orange. When she looks up to calm her swirling mind with it, there is only the hint of change peeking over the twisted black fence of her balcony. It feels more like sleep than waking, and it allows her to dream.
I hark about being direct,
But I’d hate to spill this to you.
It’s overfull already.
There’s nothing I can do.
I’ll turn it to ink.
That’s all this is, really;
A novel or a journal
Or whatever it needs to be called,
But it’s ink, and I’m assured that
The things you don’t see can’t hurt you, or me.
She breathes in the ghost of the night again. Things are pink, now, orange just at the crest of the buildings in front of her. The sunrise is always too fast. A fire burns light years away, and even through all that space, she can feel it coming. Inevitable.
She writes with fingers shaky from the chill, burgundy blanket itching around her shoulders, slipping down when she gets too absorbed to pull it back up.
If I were to be the kind of woman
To make requests,
I’d have asked you to stay again, yesterday,
Against my judgment,
Against the ticking of the clock in the hallway.
And if I were that woman, and you were the kind of woman
That you are at night,
Then you would have stayed,
And maybe I’d make you eggs,
Or jam,
And we’d do those things people do
When they aren’t afraid.
The sky is red, now, burning.
I’m not that woman.
I’ll never make you stay.
~~~
Maybe we won’t have those things
She scribbles it out all messy and wrong, late at night, curled up alone with eyeshadow running down her face in tear tracks because she never has been able to use actual eyeliner; she grabbed a pointy brush and called it good five hours ago, rubbing it off and trying again three times for good measure, running over puddle-strewn streets in too-expensive heels that she tried on four different times before deciding she was being ridiculous .
And then she ran back hours later, allowing the street to soak into the satin, knowing she’d regret it later and sparing herself the work of caring about another useless little thing.
Maybe we’ll only have what we said we would-
We have an agreement, you and I,
For three weeks of expertise.
We have an agreement.
We agree.
We always seem to agree.
The things you said to me–
Those beautiful little nothings, those evil,
Despicable words.
“I will,”
You said.
$30 an hour for another person on the team,
And we agreed.
Then you said things like,
“If you want,”
And you got unsure,
And we got unsteady,
And we both agreed that it was best to be
Sturdy,
And safe,
And willing.
And I wasn’t willing.
I’d work on it for you,
But this wasn’t a date,
This wasn’t what I hoped it would be,
This was what I expected,
Because we agreed.
A tear hits the paper, and “agreed” runs into all the little colors, and none of the letters. It makes a mess of sense and turns it into something beautiful instead. Caitlyn allows it, runs more tears onto the page, makes the biggest mess she can and leans against the wall of her dark little corner feeling like she’ll make it bleed color, too. Red for the way she burned when Vi led her by the hand, blue for the serenity in quiet conversation, yellow for the bubbles that spilled from Caitlyn’s lips whenever Vi slipped her jokes like fine wines, filling her head with light air. A bunch of other colors, she was sure, but they were all interrupted by white, by paper, by words and work and reality and Caitlyn being-
“So fucking stupid…” she whispers now, shoving hands into her hair and tugging. It slips through her fingers. What a soft, familiar feeling– lovely things falling out of your grasp.
~~~
It’s funny how everything happens all at once.
She’s on the balcony again. It’s mid-morning, and the streets are bustling. Caitlyn lays down her pen and tilts her head, watches a man pushing a cart of fruit down the road, a scruffy black dog trotting alongside him. Some kids yell and streak past him, skipping, running into each other trying to stop at the edge of a road. A little grey car bumps along it, slows down, and meanders through a sea of people walking to work. Somewhere far away, the same things happen. She can’t watch them all, but the thought of them overwhelms her. If she could hear them all, it would be so loud.
A million whispers make a massive storm.
You know that.
You’re good at making storms,
And you’re good at keeping promises.
It’s been three weeks, and the job is done. The job is done well. It’s a weight off of Caitlyn’s shoulders, honestly, but she still feels heavy. She’s like lead in morning light; it reflects right off of her, and she presses forcefully to the ground, feet sliding in her slippers.
If I were someone else I would have kissed you that night in my room.
I admit it.
But I’m the agreeable kind, and you’re honest.
Where does that leave us?
Everything, all the time.
It’s not enough to write it down.
It wants to get out.
A yell from the street, and she pauses, listens. Laughter.
Everything is hand in hand.
You’re pretty and you’re painful,
And I’ll fall for that.
I can be falling and fasting
at the same time–
It’s a talent of mine.
At least, she thinks, she’s gotten more comfortable with words through this. With feelings, and their wiry, wily ways. Everything is a lesson , a mentor had told her once. She looks down at everything on the street, and it presses into her like much more than a lesson. It’s real, and so is she, and everything is pretty and it hurts . She’s above it all, and for what? To watch?
She snaps the book closed, not bothering to be quiet.
~~~
“I’m glad you told me,” Vi says later, lips pressed to Caitlyn’s forehead. “I thought- well, I don't know what I thought. I tried not to think. I’m not- this is a little scary,” she whispers, and Caitlyn sighs into her.
“Thank god,” she breathes. “It’s not just me.”