originally published in Raw Lit, Raw Lit, issue 3

The Archaeology of the Inner States

(description of a possible state)

How will he know if what he is experiencing here is in fact the present moment? 

What does he make of the unknowable unfolding of these churning seconds? 

Can he be sure that this is not a memory he occupies? 

His life is folded on itself— pulled into an endless loop. His childhood presses against his adulthood, his past merges into his present, pulls away, leaves behind an amalgamate of both. He is in a constant state of awaking from a dream. The various parts of his life are rendered down and molten, spit out, as if from a fissure in the earth. 

He is swept up in an anomaly; he is a wave crashing upon a shore. 

And it is because of this that he sees the future, it is because of this that his past is not left behind. 

You watch him sitting at the table by the window. You wonder why he concurrently appears to be there and not be there. There is a slight flicker in the lights, the outside corner of your eye twitches, and you blink to make it stop. For a fraction of a moment, he is gone, but the air that had surrounded him does not yet rush in to fill the space he occupied. 

He is there, and he is not. 

He feels that you are not like the others. He feels that he can come to rest in your presence. He wants you to be unlike the others, he wants you to want nothing from him except what he gives freely, he wants you to be nowhere else but here. 

And he is here and he is not, and he longs for this to stop.

What do you think it feels like to him, to be everywhere at once and nowhere also? What questions would you ask him? What burden would you be willing to lift? And I know from the way you look at him that you believe no burden would be too great. I know you believe this but think carefully about the things you want to know. He will trust you for just a moment, and then never again, or forever and always. Think carefully about the burdens you are willing to bear.  

Things move, up and down, back and forth; they twist and spiral, double back, weave fractal patterns repeating endlessly. Our minds mimic the world, our minds build a universe; neurons mass at the gates of our consciousness.

He watches you move; he holds tight to every fraction of your body’s progress across the room. He tries to build a linear description of the world, tries to slip into the stream of others. 

Are you thinking of the burdens you will carry? 

Are you thinking of his gaze pressing hard against you?

Time passes differently for him, though he watches and tries to calibrate his hours to yours. 

How does he see you in these unmatched seconds? What can he know from the moments hidden from you? There are so many questions one needs to answer, so many spaces one needs to fill. 

You brush his shoulder as you pass, kiss him gently on the mouth. Your lips taste faintly of mint, your mouth feels faintly of home. He will bookmark this moment, return to it often. He folds and intersects, pulls the past into the present like rivers feeding into oceans. He is barely here, but he is nowhere else. You shimmer and vibrate, you pass and are reborn. You put your hand in his; you whisper something in his ear. Time does not know what to do with moments like these; it stops, it bulges, it loses its way. Time is an arrow until you strip it of its fletching. 

I am watching, but from where do I watch? This is a question I cannot answer because I do not see myself from a vantage point outside myself. I am always at the center, as are you. But I think he has no center; I think he is outside space as well as time. He seems always out of focus, as if two, or three, or four images of himself are overlapped, barely misaligned. He is there, but he is not there, he is solid but he is not. 

You love him. You wish he would lock himself in the moment, any moment, here with you. Do you not see the madness his life evokes, do you see only a hologram of a man stretched across time, stretched into moments that still yet do not exist? Wouldn’t this drive any of us mad? But you want this madness turned on you. You want him to take you, you want him to choose this moment over all others, you want him to madly love you.

He wants you to hold him to this moment, though he cannot tell you this; his voice speaks now only from the far distance and it cannot reach you. He sits in silence at the kitchen table. Often he moves as if nothing is wrong. He makes patterns of the things scattered before him, arranges plates and napkins, knives, and forks. You think he is trying to tell you something. You place your hand gently over his, try to feel rather than see. Where is he, this man who vowed a home with you? He told you he was born with your name stitched upon his heart, that he carried you with him everywhere and always. Are you still with him now? Does he feel you on the edges of that dark loop?

It is best that you do not know. Isn’t this what you tell yourself in the quiet cold hours? His body occupies the spaces—at the table, in the hallways, in your bed.

He is there, but not there.

He is here, but he is elsewhere. 

Why is life like this?

You gather up the broken glass. You gather up everything that has broken new this day. You have mountains of debris. You have reservoirs of tears. Occasionally he will look at you as if he is only here. Occasionally he will look at you as if to say he is back finally for good. But these moments become fewer and more distantly spaced.

You kiss the soft turmoil of his hair, press your hand to his chest. You feel for his beating heart, feel for the raised stitches of your embroidered name. 

This is one possible outcome, one possible state. But you will love him still and always because his name is stitched and written on your heart as well. Can we ever know this name until we call it out—until it is the only name we want to hear an answer to?

You move about the kitchen. You watch memories swirl and float through the beam of light falling through the skylight. You are close enough to touch him, yet your distance is too great.

A thread, almost invisible, catches the light filling the kitchen. You trace its length from your name to his. It is faint and unbreakable, it is sparkling and alive.

You turn towards the sink, dip your hands into the warm soapy water. You gaze through the window into the world. 

Light fills the spaces,

a thread tugs gently at your heart.