Evenscry’s Weblog

Here is a disparate meandering of ideas, the likes of which begin to formulate prior to midnight, but really only emerge after the clock strikes twelve.
I believe that these would not even have been possible if not for a day entirely spent reading Dork Tower and practicing both singing and playing a few songs by The Decemberists. (Today’s title comes from their song “The Engine Driver.”)
I feel that both these indulgences foster my inner loquaciousness, creativity, and complete and utter geek-drenched soul.

1.) He has eyes the color of a seashore sky, the palette implying that clouds will soon turn from wisps of white to dark and roiling grey. I imagine that it is the turbulence within that he holds back; he is always peaceful and placid on the surface. He tells me that he grows more obsessive and more compulsive as he ages. My mind’s eye tells me that the color of his eyes will change into a deeper and more vivid blue with this change in his habits. Perhaps as he releases the storm from his inner depths, the grey will simply fade from his eyes.
Even as I birth these thoughts, I cannot help but imagine him laughing, head thrown back, crooked teeth exposed, jagged, like friendly rocks. His mirth would be paid at my expense, but only as much as he believes I can handle. When suddenly my eyes turn from the green of sodden seaweed to the vivid summer leaves, he assuredly knows that my own darkness is about to be released. Should the green suddenly glister with the dew of fresh tears, either of hurt or humiliation, his simple heart will pang with regret. Such pinpricks create ripples and dents in each of our armor, and he is quick to smooth away such imperfections.
And thus is our friendship, simple and complex all in one breath.
I wait for the day when I no longer notice the eggshells upon which I often find myself walking.

2.) She sat examining the tips of her fingers, how they tapered at the ends in a way she had never before noticed. It was as if she had never before even seen her hands, had only used them through intuition, and now that she looked, saw them as strangers, perhaps even as enemies, betrayers. Whose hands were these, chalk-stained, sinewed, and small? The silver ring that she had worn for years on the fourth finger of her right hand, that too seemed alien. It slid loosely over the knuckle, no longer reining in the soft flesh of what had once been her right hand.
If her hands had changed so much without her knowledge, what else would she not recognize? What would the mirror reveal next? Would the lips she used to smile be someone else’s? Whose smile would her eyes reveal the next time she bothered to look? Surely not her own. No, surely not.
Indeed, in no time at all, she had changed, and though she found a sense of wonder in the experience, fear danced like light at the corner of her eyes.

3.) She would arrive in moments. His hands were affixed to the edge of his writing desk, claws created from some rictus or paralysis. Had anyone been watching, they would have noticed his pallor, the labor in his breathing. So long had he fended off his fear of this coming moment, repressed it deep into the inner recesses that lie somewhere between conscious and unconscious thought, it could now only be expressed through his posture, through his bodily function.
Seventeen minutes, it would take her. All their lives they had lived apart by only a seventeen minute car ride. They had been aware of this fragile barrier for only three years, three years of carefully practiced and measured affection, well-regulated devotion, and their only experiences of what the young mind considers “love.” Seventeen minutes always seemed like a lifetime for each of them, but today, today he felt it too short. Any amount of time would be too short, for upon her arrival, he would have to send her away again shortly. It was time for them to end this parody of true love; it was time for them both to be free. And even though he knew that he really would rather that she wouldn’t be the one to say it first, as he clung to his writing desk, unable to move his fingers from the polished edge, he told himself that he wished she would be the one to let this go.