Double sided

She left with goosebumps and tears perched at the corners of her eyes, and yet with the smallest of victorious smiles. She watched him dance upwards as she ran her thumb and pinky up his spine as one. His thin lips moved left with his smirk and bold eyes as he looked through her. The whispers of the comforter warmed them as his voice warmed her. He asked her the same silly question from the night before that she still had no answer to. He sang songs she only knew the beats to as they moved in those rhythms together. He grabbed her hand and she shivered with how it sprang through her veins. Pain, she realized there, was something she had not known as well as she thought.

The first remembrance

She didn't believe it when she was told what would happen, but she wanted to. The so lost yet still found faces roamed in and out of the breeze ways struggling with carts and torn cardboard boxes, saying their peace with bittersweet melodies, and wiping away the beads of water from both their foreheads and eyes. Promising herself to change, to get lost, to get found again, she closed her trunk with the electric blue Ibanez over her shoulder and a large Beatles poster in the crook of her arm. Time passed, as always, people came in and out of the room- some with indifference or ignorance and others with an overwhelming compassion. Taking in everything, she continued to unpack the books she had brought along, even the ones hidden away and bound by leather and elastic.
She watched the sun set from her window on the third floor as it disappeared into the everglades that never gave back. It set over the lake where she could see hundreds of ripples from the fish and the reflection of the once strong tree in the water. The orange disc fell sooner than she thought it would and as it did so she offered a small sigh and thought of all the other things that had passed so soon. The night was hers to have and so she made it so. The North Star was much lower in the horizon than she had known it to be and she could see different constellations from where she now was- they were brighter, somehow.
The brick pavement led her to another opening, one with stragglers like her seeking a form of anything but solitude. She saw him there, turning, antsy, tall and gliding- and it was there that she knew exactly what she was doing, or going to do. He turned as he saw her and stared for a moment before he spoke with the smallest of smiles. She returned the gesture, looking about a foot upwards to meet his reflective eyes. The voice sounding from the chest wasn't like one she had heard before, but she knew too well the voice of his eyes. He introduced himself with a nickname that made her laugh, the irony was too real to compromise and with that she told him the name he would call her, trying to hide the smirk she could never keep.
'Are you as lost as I am?', him looking down through her big dark eyes
She laughed again as they walked to the billiards hall, 'Not anymore'.

The old card player

The old card player looked around the crowded room

Felt, green, clouded air

Deal

Night vision, to see through

Raise

The old card player let the cigar smoke sink into his skin

Table, knock, golden drink

Flop

Pleasant surprise, touch of the chin

Call

The old card player listened to the surrounding scoffs 

Chair, creak, noisy shuffles 

Turn

Disapproval, with a cough 

Check

The old card player checked his queen

of heart and diamond

Chips, ash, parting eyes 

River

Realization, the dying sun

Fold

Nobody knew his deck was only numbered to fifty one

Notions

She woke in the dark of the night, suddenly. A small smile crept its way to show after she remembered where she was and felt the warmth of a back on her left cheek. Their breathing was in sync, she counted the long and quiet strokes and stopped at 37 to notice. It was cold everywhere else except near him, the vertical blinds danced as the fan led them in their respective waltzes, and the light from the lot across the way snuck in and played quick notes like a piano on the white walls. She watched the light move from space to space in unpredictable motions as if there was no range or domain it could not reach. She could feel him dreaming, his breathing was changing in lengths, and she felt him tense up while her face was still against his spine. For a moment she touched him on his mid upper back on the raised part of the piece that was carved into him. Still asleep, he rolled over and put his hand on her neck as if it was a familiar place. Then a sentence was spoken in mumble but still clear enough to hear, not from her. Saddened, she sighed and turned onto the shoulder she did not usually sleep on after hearing the very thing she had wanted him to say. It was there amongst pillows and sheets and a whisper that she recognized yet again, that some things can only ever exist in dreams.

Thrones

It was about two weeks after he had gone, just a few days before the fall holiday on the last of the month. There was only comfort in the borrowed room with the heron blue walls and the pressed wooden frames. Apart from going to the only place she had to go every morning, this room shaped with five walls was where she stayed. Twelve days had passed in which the only words that slipped off of her silent lips were 'no'- it was within those days that the girl who once was so alive vowed to stop the quick and quirky gestures and words that people had loved her for. She was still and always had been everybody's favourite- but those things were for him, and he was no longer.

The only light she had allowed for the duration was the face of the moon that looked through the window of the skylight every night, it was the only light that was ever sure to stay. The sun was begging the horizon to be had on this night and though there was still enough light lingering from its rays, the waning moon had made an early appearance. She stared at the walls that once held them close together, the guitar that he always left behind with the red ribbon around the neck, and the shattered hourglass all across the floor that had once been filled with black sand. Had she any desire to leave the bed that matched the colour of the walls and now molded her sideways shape, she would have broken everything, even the things that one would think could not be broken. They had always warned her about choosing metaphors wisely when broken- that if she chose the snapped strings, she chose to be irreparably broken- that if she chose the pulled grass, she chose to keep her roots- that if she chose the dead clock, she chose for things to be right even for just a moment or two. She always liked the strings.

Even before it happened, she was a creature of her own. She had made her nightstand out of shoeboxes and out of the corner of her eye she saw the bright light from her phone stay constant. Of course the last time she answered the phone she heard the words that brought her here, so the motivation to answer this call was nonexistent until she saw who it was from. His best friend never called her and though they were close, they only ever talked when the three of them were together. All of them had names that only belonged to them when they were all around. She was Brick and the one that had gone was Noisemaker.

They called his best friend Eyes- partly because his name was Isaac but mostly because he was blind, and that sort of humour was never absent from the three of them. They could have been twins despite their differing facial features, for they thought, acted, loved, said, read, and bled for the same things. Eyes would always tell his best friend that he was lucky to find this girl and he would always say back 'well I saw her first' with the sweetest victory smirk one could ever give, and always they would laugh after a claim of unfairness. They were like brothers and at the graves of people they once knew, they would stand side by side and say a line about death from a book they had both read, together. So she answered only to hear a voice that cried out much like the one in her head.

'Brick'- he sobbed, 'Brick, I need you to come get me'

'Where are you, Eyes?'- the first words she had spoken in days

'Im at my house'- his voice almost in a whimper, 'Brick, are you listening? I need you to take me'

'Take you where?'- blankly but worried

'To the ocean'- him, flatly

She told him that she would be there soon and did not question his request, to question that was the last on her piling list of unanswerable thoughts. It was getting darker still, the wind could be heard making its way through the branches of the many trees outside, and the house was quiet. She grabbed her keys and made way out of the walls that kept her warm, towards the burgundy door with the large glass oval at its center. Her mother jumped off the couch, surprised with a hint of worry- asking where her hallow daughter was going at this hour. She always had something to say.

'Im picking up Isaac'- her haired pulled back as she used to wear it, so that her widow's peak could not go unnoticed, along with a large grey hooded sweatshirt that she would eventually wear down.

'Why?'- still acting motherly as if nothing had happened

'We're going to the beach'- the girl said as if it was an unremarkable demand

'You can't leave now'- her mother's obedient strawberry blonde hair moved with the tone of her voice

The girl gave one of her famous looks to the woman standing across from her as if she was a stranger, with her head cocked to the right, one eye slightly more open than the other, shoulders open, and her expressive eyebrows doing their dance- she laughed a small sad sigh and before she left she pronounced,

'As if we have any say when it's time to leave.'

She made her way to his house and approached his small stoop in order to lead him to the car she would soon come to love. Apart from the sixteen track disc playing, the car ride was filled only with the deafening silence that they could feel running through their bloodstreams. The highway was screaming, rubies and diamonds getting more scarce the further they drove. It was not the closest beach, but it was the one she knew best and so she pulled into the sandy access that led to a place she had once spent most summers. Turning the car off, she told him they were there.

The smell of salt took over her, the wind was stronger here and ran races in her hair and through the small open spaces that her sweatshirt allowed- her legs were never cold. Without hesitation or tremble he told her take him to the shore, but only to where the tide could just touch his ankles. It was dark now, the kind of dark that made all surroundings disappear- she led him to where he requested, telling him to watch out for spurs just to have some sort of normalcy to this quest. They stood there for brief moments that felt like eternities, her slightly behind but still beside him. She looked to her right to watch his face as he stared into the black abyss sounding in front of them. It was odd because for the first time he looked like he could really see, and the sea was always looking back. He looked back at her and started again to sob and muster out his short sentences.

'I needed to know, Brick'- he was still in tears not bothering to wipe them away

'Needed to know what?'- in her short quipped tone on the verge of tears herself

'I needed to know what it felt like, what it sounded like'-him. The lump in her throat was there to stay.

Him again, '.. that his last moments sounded like these terrifying waves, crashing and taking and never giving back what once was', another pause- 'I needed to know that it was just as lovely, just like this'

She was on the ground now in violent shakes with dispersed waves of wails, he felt for her there and held her in the way that his best friend once did- not knowing that his hands were around her shoulders like his would have been or that his chin was resting in the same spot on the side of her head as the others' used to.

She finally spoke in an angry slew that slowed to a sad song with unceasing rivers of tears flowing, 'What am I supposed to do, Eyes?? What is this feeling?! Why do I feel like everything was just torn out of me? Why should anyone feel this? What is this?!? Everybody wants me to talk and say what I'm feeling and how I'm doing and act like I didn't just lose the thing that saved me every day. What am I supposed to say? What-' he shushed her and spoke firm

'There is only one thing we can say'- he said, and she moved her head from the crook of his neck so she could see him as he handed her a thick envelope from his pocket that had a familiar scrawl on the outside of it

'And what's that?'- her soft mutter

'The only thing we can ever say, Brick, "not today".'

Killers

She was worse than a cheater and she was worse than a thief. Something much worse. She was a killer. She had killed something, and she had killed it when its back was turned. There was a time when she had something to live for and something to fight for and something to work at, and that made her a better killer but as it always is, she massacred the very thing that sparked her fire.
It was not a loud massacre and no blood was shed but it was more brutal than someone getting what they longed for, and that is hard to achieve. She now knew why she was a guarded soul. She now knew why she never told the whole truth. She now understood why. That was always her burning question. Why physics would always win. Why she could not throw a jagged stone into the ocean and expect still water. Why the asphalt beneath her would always have grooves and missing pieces- because having the courage to do the right thing was always harder than turning something so good into a killer of its own.

Whispers of an end

They were in his room, the bare walls and dark sheets oddly overwhelmed the sort of emptiness they were surrounded by. It was more than midway through the year and they had been at this sort of thing for awhile but the occasion of being together was rare and cherished. There wasn't much to look at but she had a knack for scanning rooms despite their seeming blankness. She never thought things could be empty, foolish perhaps, but she stuck to it. Every now and then when he was in the bathroom or kitchen she'd steal a long look across the bookshelves or night stand or how his shoes were placed on his floor- she would lie to herself and say the first thing she looked at with people was their eyes but she always looked at their hands and feet. There was this unspoken knowledge between her and her father that taught her that a pair of shoes could tell more stories than anything else, and stories made up the basis for who people are and who they had been. So that's where she started.

He had no clocks and usually she could tell the time of day within minutes of uncertainty, but today she was off. Without looking through the blinds she could only tell that the sun was nowhere to be found and the clouds were being territorial as if the royal sky was their battlefield. The room was not lit, as both preferred, but the change in light could be seen by those page-like shadows sweeping across the walls. The thing about rooms was that there was always a sense of wanting to be welcomed, as if a room could grant such a thing, but there was always that elephant of strangeness and uncomfortableness that served to be greater. 

She liked him, well-liked him at that. Something about how he looked almost fluid and never changing pace whilst walking or the way his cheekbones would rise especially high during something amusing. Maybe it was those resplendent blue eyes that would change shade depending on his mood or the way he would offer a low hum only doing certain things. Foiling her parents, she had always been a listener and a researcher- that's how she learned people. Quiet discoveries were victories and a sick part of her got off from asking specific questions she already knew the answers to. There were certain parts of him that were more than predictable and then other parts of him that one could never guess. It was a multitude of things, and that was the only thing she was sure of.
He was lying beside her now, the comforter strewn across the bed and tangled between their legs- another preference. As for him, he liked this strange girl next to him. In fact, he liked her more than she liked him which was something neither of them knew. He liked the way her hair curled after showers and how she could only fall asleep if she was curled up in a ball on her right shoulder. He loved the way she tapped her fingers on the side of her leg when her mind was doing backflips or the rare times he would catch her dancing to silence. Though he liked the most particular things about her his favourite was the sillage of her perfume tracing her path as she walked away- it was as if she was leaving parts of herself for him to keep, the residue of her presence. There was something to this girl, and that was the only thing he was sure of.
She was giving him one of those vanquishing small smiles that could only ever fit her face. Before he met her back through their coil of sheets he had put on a song that they both knew quite well, there was something to this frenzy between them. So they lie together in the most serene of silences despite the music playing, tangled and warm and as one. If there was not something else occupying her mind she would count, this was one of those times. Out of the corner of her left eye she would watch his stomach slowly rise and fall, it reminded her of the way he walked. She got to the fall of his stomach on the seventy-second breath and he broke the somewhat silence:

'I think I know'- short and fast and low as usual

'You know a lot. What do you think you know?'- her, engaged

He let out a slight huff of a chuckle signifying that he knew that she already knew what he was going to say
'How you think it ends'- him in a congruent tone to his previous break

'Tell me, then'- the girl

'You first'- him, knowing she loved but did not like it when he twisted the game

'That's against the rules'- her, now propped up on an elbow eager per usual when he offered a piece of his mind to her

'Apart from the fact that you're right, I wish you weren't in a way.'- him, averting from disclosure

'Say it'- in the way she sometimes got demanding

He laughed and propped himself up as a mirror to her. He ran the fingers on his left hand through her hair and made his way past her ear and at the nape of her neck with his lips. Now holding a fistful of locks to his face he knew why there was something to this. Though he never kept her gaze for long, he took her chin so that her eyes pierced him back and through..



'It doesn't'