Restraint

It’s difficult to accept that the person you love isn’t the person you’re with.

I remember the first time I noticed how much she’d changed since I met her, since we fell for each other. There had been signs, I suppose, but I hadn’t picked up on them. At least, until I noticed the extra toe on her left foot.

I didn’t say anything about it, and I don’t think she was even aware that it was there. I’d pretend to be asleep until I knew she was sleeping, and then I’d sit up and count her toes over and over again, thinking that I must be making an error somewhere along the way.

It took me a half-hour to work up the courage to touch them. I placed a fingertip on each of her toes, as this was the only way I could be sure that I wasn’t miscounting. Five fingers touched to five toes, and one left over.

I thought it would bother me a lot more than it did, to be honest. The more I thought about it the over the next few days, the more it seemed interesting instead of alien. It seemed unique. I found beauty in it, after a time, and enjoyed the dissonance of her feet next to mine.

I remember these times very vividly, very richly. These were the last times where I felt that we shared a sacred space.

…

I haven’t left the house in a month, I don’t think, and this is almost certainly why I’m feeling as anxious as I am. I’m afraid for her, and for what could happen while I’m away. We’re both happier when I’m at home.

She seems fairly content, and she’s starting to eat again. I’ve found that I have the most success in getting her to eat something if I turn off most of the lights first, although I can usually leave on the one with the orange shade. She seems particular to sour milk and cake, and I have to turn my back before she’ll touch it. She won’t come out if she knows I’m looking. It’s progress, but I don’t think I can leave her to her own devices, not for a while yet.

I do miss the time we used to spend together. We still share space — I’ll sit alongside the wall and read children’s books aloud to her until I hear the sound I’ve come to associate with contentment — but I’m not small enough to fit in the space under the bed where she spends her time.

The kittens could’ve fit there, perhaps, if they were still here. They had become so agitated over the past few weeks that it was in their best interest to find them a new home. I miss them, but I didn’t have a choice. Near the end, they had spent all of their time in the basement, and wouldn’t come upstairs to eat.

They’ll be happier elsewhere.

…

I wonder what she looks like, now. I seem to recall that I caught a glimpse of her once, when I walked into the bedroom without knocking first. Or at least, I recall remembering that this happened, but the memory itself is foggy, and unreliable.

Sometimes I’ll sit and close my eyes, and pretend that the noises she makes are whispers, the ones I’d hear when we were younger and simpler. I’ll find myself singing, nonsense words in a quiet tenor I didn’t know I had.

I think that it soothes her. I think she knows it’s a love song.

It started when she took up residence in my arm. The brachialis, to be specific (although I felt a tickle in my medial border, at times). She would whisper to me of her life in lands I would never see, and of her exile from Arcadia. I promised her safety, and she promised me stories.

I would sing to her at night, when the house was asleep. I spun tales of knights who moved mountains for true love, and warned her of the greed and hatred within men. We would spend eternities together, surrounded by moonlight and sand. Our joy was perfect, crystal pure and clean.

We would have had the world together, if it weren’t for the gnomes.

They landed in my ankle, stubborn and gnarled. Green hats and ironwood canes, they were not friendly, and did not care for sovereignty. They annexed my synovial membrane, and made for the hip within weeks.

We did the only thing we could do, and soon the armies made camp at my xiphoid process. The lines were drawn, and the conflict was now inevitable.

The first shots were fired some time ago. I write this missive to you as the war machines roll into place, and both sides begin consuming the land they hold, to destroy the land they do not. My body. My battleground.

…

I can hear the bones grinding, dead trees singing beneath my skin.

He said: Do you remember how the stars used to sing for me? How the sky would open itself at night?

She said: I don’t know how I got so far away. I don’t know.

…

When I was young, I watched the moon fall from the sky. It crashed into earth, imbedding itself into the horizon, an impossibly huge half-circle dominating the landscape. We all stopped and watched, old men leaving their cars by the roadside to step onto the grass, to maybe reach higher ground. We were whole then, brought together by something greater than ourselves.

…

Leslie, when I need magic, I think of you.