It’s her blue sweater that first catches his eye. She herself is not that enthralling – she is a small, mousy thing, with a messy bun and narrow, frameless glasses. She is rather inconspicuous and easily becomes part of the background images. Today is different. His eyes catch on her deep blue sweater before traveling up the curves of her body to meet her brown eyes.

            There is a moment where he feels something so old it may as well have been foreign. A spark of flame, something that could possibly be described as passion. He sees in her eyes a quiet, searing lust and a desire to escape and he burns with the desire to reciprocate.

            He looks down at his hands out of a sudden, intense shyness. Her passion is too strong, the flame too bright. He just wants to grind out an eight hour workday, go home, relax with a book or the tube, and go to sleep. He is too old now for fanciful things like passion or escape. He tells himself this but he can’t help but look up at her, can’t resist the blueness of her sweater or the brownness of her eyes.

            She is applying chapstick. She rubs the slim tube of white paste sensually across her lips before capping it with a soft click and placing it in her purse. She looks up quickly, locks eyes, and something tingles between them.

            He dreams. It’s a dream of love and houses and white picket fences, of cigarette smoke trailing lazily from an ashtray and toothbrushes left carelessly by the sink, of fights and of sex, of tears and kisses. He opens his mouth to say something to her, and nothing comes out. What is there to say?

            The bus jerks to a stop. An electronic voice disrupts the current between them and he looks up quickly, almost thankfully. This is his stop. He casts one more longing glance at her, but she’s looking through her purse.

            He leaves the bus and never looks back at what could have been.

Thanks to Will Coon for the general idea.

Acrylic on shoe, August 10, 2008.

Papers.

A snowstorm of white pages with insignificant black specks.

She’s screaming something, but you can’t quite understand her. She’s lost in the jungle of sheets floating to the ground.

You stare, not understanding. Uncomprehending.

She’s screaming and pointing. A cigarette is still smoking on the ash tray shaped like a palm tree that you bought from Mexico many years ago. There is an eerie quiet, the only sound you hear a buzzing in your ears that sounds vaguely like her. The papers are still fluttering to the ground.

Your bottle of beer from last night is still on the table, next to the unpaid bills in their unopened envelopes, mixed in with thank you cards to be sent from years ago. The beer’s gone bad by now, surely undrinkable. There might be a fly in it even – or a moth. Those damn things are everywhere.

She’s crying. It’s last night. You set down the bottle of beer next to the unpaid bills in their unopened envelopes and you hold her close, smell the shampoo she used that morning and say nothing. You hold her until her rhythmic sobbing stops, and you both slide to the unswept floor.

She’s shouting and crying. She’s sliding to the unswept floor, surrounded by a whirling mess of papers. An unfinished, rejected novel. Your unfinished, rejected novel. She’s still pointing, spitting out accusations and condemnations and demands.

You stand, not understanding. Uncomprehending.

She screams; she rages.

A flash of coat, a swirl of blond hair, a final venomous look with emerald eyes.

The door slams behind her, swings open, and finds a comfortable place between open and closed.

It’s last night, and you’re in bed, her body in your hands and her scent in your nose. She kisses your forehead, makes a promise she breaks in seventeen hours. You curl up to her warmth, and you fall asleep.

A memory: books are closing, papers rustling. A pen is falling to the floor, ignored – displaced in memory. Does it ever come to rest?

Now: Books yearning to be opened, papers invading enemy territory. Half-filled coffee cups breathe sighs of relief visible in the harsh white light of a paper lantern. A laptop’s dim idle screen proclaims victory or at least armistice. The desk? A mess.

The floor: dirty clothes and clean clothes, intermixed; a patchwork of filth and the scent of fabric softener. A newspaper, crumpled, with last week’s headline. Textbooks in submission, exposing secrets to the clammy night air. A wallet, open; an id – a resident of California. Holographic laminate glitters beneath suffocating plastic.

A movement: a susurration of cloth, a quiet murmur.

Two figures: tangled crimson sheets, pillows lying askew. A mess of brown-and-black strands. Interlocked fingers; two rings (one for each). The memory of laughter fading into sleep and dreams of oblivion.