Nineteen Days written by Troy Jurach
Too late to leave, too early to stay. He didn’t feel the cold biting at his neck. The muscles of his arm were tightened and contracted as he stood staring at her. She asked with an empty expression that concealed more, “What do you want to do?” He had been wandering now, for nineteen days. He had removed his shoes as he trod across the surface of the sun. The flames licking his toes peeled away the flesh, but never left them blackened. With each arching movement, triumph cripples stagnation in his spine and shakes the rust from his lungs. Where does it feel like your consciousness resides? Higher than the bridge of your nose. A funny thing the face of man. It stands as a receptacle of sensory experience and culminating confusion. An eager array of hands competing to tell their story to a peaked child. Our eyes play tricks, our ears play tricks, our mouths play tricks on other people. “What do you want to do?” His inability to discern was rare; an eclipse to a distant nebula. I’m convinced that the unhappiest amongst men are the ones who take to reading for fun, or perhaps, the ones who take to reading as a purpose. The stars never change and still, they never look the same while with you. In the mild cold, they walk with their arms around each other. His, around her shoulders; hers, around his waist. They walk arm in arm as the night spills over their lips and drains into their throats. It’s warmer than it has been, but still cold. They cross paths of lifeless concrete, lighting the path as they walk. The glow of their canter reminds the night her stars. They begin to climb the steps of their end. He wants to ascend two at a time, but his legs are filled with more than blood and bone. He says, “So this is what it feels like.” But he doesn’t ask it. He doesn’t say it like a real question. Questions are the marks of men who don’t know what will come next. Maybe he does. Their feet trickle across the planes until the stars are closer to their necks. As orbs of luminous hum hover in the gaping black, their bodies regain each other. As they walk, their meiosis lasts long enough only to allow the physical landscape between them to pass. As one, they walk centered across mountains suspended over water. Below, the glass is close enough to drink with their hands. Above them, the fabric is enough to blind them from the rest of the world forever. As if to hide this rare event. Because who could be worthy of sharing with them, this. None… And if not who, then what? What could be worthy of their lucidity? That is yet to remain seen, but she would not say that. The human eye is clouded by limitation, but vision does not have to be seen through the eyes. It can be felt. May he always feel. May he always feel her. “What do you want to do?” Whether it was said out loud, or only in his head, he spoke, “I want what you want.” But she was becoming an island, an island amongst a crashing sea of red. The key in her eyes was locked behind chaotic white calm. The anger-less black of his frustration said only one thing, but it didn’t understand what it said, yet. He wanted to speak, but his tongue was chained to the anchor falling toward the center of the earth. In those moments when neither understood, and nothing could be said, he lost his footing and fell into the liminal void between them. He beckoned to see the place where the stars dip beneath the electric water. There, he wanted her to bathe in the light radiating from his eyes. She wouldn’t go tonight, but he knew that eventually, she would. She always had, and never will. Time is an organized illusion, a religion of the present. Why not reduce the present to everything that ever was and will be. If he was angry that night, it was only because he knew of the beauty to come because it had always been. And tempers are a brutish thing, so to remove himself from them, he must remove himself from the world. As bursts and explosions of yellow glare rushed past him, he knew that in that moment, his place was in the world. The only one who could cripple his understanding of it was the one he wanted to be beside. He felt as if lifetimes had past since he had last walked away. He stopped his swift movements, and when he turned back, he saw her moving away. He began walking toward her. He needn’t run because he would catch her before she could speed away from him. He walked with a hurried cantor that shows only to the eyes that he chased. She turned the corner and he followed. But when he got there, she was gone. The composure cultivated for years, erased in seconds. He moved swiftly, circling, and climbing stairs to find the spirit that pervaded his. And then… Fear Cold, poignant fingers tightened their grip around his neck, stifling his breathing. He may have spoke aloud, “Was she real? What anything real?” Years of self-awareness, sureness, and clarity, reduced to the inescapable feeling that they were wrong. It made sense that she disappeared as violently as she had appeared. Nothing so beautiful and complex could exist long with him. Who was she? Had he imagined it all? As he fumbled through moments embalmed in time, he found her name and the messages shared between them. Even those could be a trick to the disturbed mind. He must be sure. So he called.. And her voice.. Appeared Like a siren, her voice rang out across the twisting sea. He returned to the elevator, and found her there. The void still stood, but it wouldn’t for long. He didn’t know why it unsettled him, but beneath it all, he knew he longed for it. He thought to himself, “I hope I am not a leaf that disappears with the spring, but if I am, let her be the soil that I melt into. Let our atoms dance and be intertwined forever.” In a world where too little is unknown, she beckons.