Skinny Love

They drove in the rain, in the quiet, through slickened dark green forests, the sky tired steely grey above them. He held the wheel loosely, happy but not satisfied, awake but tired, free but worried. The shadows danced under his eyes, their depths at once near and far. The ring on his finger glimmered dully in the silver half-light.

Next to him, she looked vacantly and intently out the window, eyes flashing over tall, brooding trees, streaming with the rain, and dark, sable-colored ground littered with snake-colored foliage. Her blue eyes were faded and tired, worn from use and heavy with thought. She was young, but her weight was old, beyond her years. Her edges were blurred, like she could slip out of sight at any moment.

The car climbed steadily up the worn asphalt road with its golden stripe now faded and cracked, rutted slightly with use. It plashed through puddles and hushed under the tunnel of spiderwebbing tree branches, up in those distant, ancient mountains. Everything was sacred there because so little is sacred elsewhere, and the quiet seemed the only natural thing. It was a place to hide in and a place to mourn; an escape both welcoming and forbidding. It humbled and ignored, its life going on regardless of human comings and goings. Fragile and timeless; a place that did not look back or stop for anything, even disaster.

They hummed through it, the wilderness ill-defeated by a skinny road, the patter of the rain their only punctuation.

He reached for her hand, but she pulled it away to stare out the rain-dashed window instead, her sea-blue eyes a million miles away.

Chicago

I fell in love again
All things go, all things go

We sang a duet, just loud enough for either of us to hear. Your voice, my voice. Rising and falling, for all the world like two breaths, a heartbeat, a mindset in sync. I didn't look at you; I didn't have to. It was all there anyway, in the song and air and things unsaid.

You came to take us
All things go, all things go
To recreate us
All things grow, all things grow

We laughed together, at our own jokes, at each other, at the funny nothing. You smiled at me just because, held my hand because you can, let your touch linger on my back and waist just for the joy and freedom of it. Because we are young. Because you like me, a lot. In your eyes, in your face, in the sly touches and hidden looks. Because it gets a little better each time we're together.

I made a lot of mistakes
In my mind, in my mind

We forgot together. The ones before.
They don't leave, but you can grow around them.

We grew together.

If I was crying
In the van, with my friend
It was for freedom
From myself, and from the land

There isn't always something to say when someone crashes. Then what is left is quiet. What is left is a gentle look and a tight hug, as tight as you can make it, big enough to eat up the sadness and worry and exhaustion and stress and bad feelings. Warm enough to chase away the chill of a clear December evening when the moon lays shrouded in fog. Long enough to make it clear that you'd take on that sorrow if only you could. Close enough to feel your heart on mine.

When there is nothing left to say out loud, we fold together.

And then you can see it--Chicago.