beginnings.

two little children, with four little hands and twenty little fingers (eight and eight and two and two), of which they use only the two. bent around each other, possesively, as if all it takes to protect a soul is a tiny turn of flesh, creased at the edges.

*

i would never want to take that away from you, you realize, she said, turning to him. there is a particular honesty in eyes, where you can see souls and words aligning.
i know, he nodded. his eyes were closed - he hadn't opened them for hours, now. he was looking at the sky, as lovers do.
good, and her hands squeezed his.

his, that were so stretched, so taut. his hands, which had seen for his eyes, when they were closed. the creases where his life lived, where she had found him, where he had -

there is a point at which only hands can tell what hands have done, what hands have seen. it lives near the soft pouch of skin created between thumb and forefinger, where we become webbed. feel it, now. touch it, with the thumb and forefinger of the other, caress it, breathe it in. see it.

*

feel the words. taste them, roll your tongue around them (gently, violently). they're yours. they'll ask you what they mean, but you know where they live. close your eyes, and see.

he saw orange, as the afternoon spilt itself onto the grass, the trees, enveloping the red brick and caressing the leaves it filtered through to touch the ground.
it's as if one day the words just stopped flowing, like a river taking another path, choosing another valley; so that every time he opens his mouth, as if to speak, all his sentences are silences, and his thoughts turn in on them selves, folded and unfolding. the truth is that there is nothing worse than being mute, unable to open your mouth, unable to form the words that want nothing more than to be said. which is what words do.
yet everytime he turns around, there is another silence. every time there is a pen, there is an empty page, as he realizes that it is not that the words have left him, it is that he has never had the words for this, he has never had the hands to envelope this, so while he may be inside it, he was never given the actual words to describe it.

there is nothing more cruel, for a writer.

*

except his eyes. they burn.

*