lux

We are sitting back to back so I can’t see her face. I know, though, it must be very pale – as always, with nearly invisible freckles mapping the sharp line of her cheekbones. There is also a blue tint spilled in uneven circles around her eyes, shade darker in the places where her eyelashes cast shadow. I always had the impression that her skin seems semi-transparent - with some inexplicable source of light floating just under its surface. When she is around it never really feels as dark as it should.

Our silence is dense and as it grows it starts absorbing all of the noises from our surrounding, all of the speckles that distort sound waves. It becomes so quiet that I can hear her heartbeat and the flutter of eyelashes when she blinks. After a while it’s nearly unbearable, as if we were submerging in some kind of a black hole. I find myself unable to make any movement – all I can do is just sit and only imagine all of the things I could (or maybe – I should) do. We are like two butterflies pierced with sharp and narrow needles to this piece of the reality, to this moment in time. The intervals between her breaths become so long that every time they happen a thought, a suspicion, that she may be dead appears. This is when I become a bit less and then, even after she swallows lazily another lungful – I know all of that won’t come back to me. So there is less and less of a human in me. Maybe that’s why I am so cold.

I can’t hear the explosions but I know for sure that the bombs are still falling – I can see their toxic and blinding reflections on the walls that surround us. I try to find recognizable shapes in the shadows moving on the walls and it feels a bit like looking at the sky and telling the stories about the clouds that happen to resemble animals or some random objects. There is a dog with three legs and something that – if you tilt your head a bit – looks like a lighthouse. I want to tell her about them but my mouth is too dry to make any sound. So I keep on playing for both of us – even if she doesn't know about it.

I remind myself the day when we last played this game, only few weeks or months ago. She was next to me, just like today, with sun-rays entangled in her hair and dew setting up in the crevices of her clothes. This bizarre inner light that lives in her was even stronger and every time I tried to look straight at her it made me squint and I would start to cry – it was like staring at the sun. I also remember she laughed a lot that morning and I really liked that sound. At some point she raised her hands to cast some shadow over her face, her fingers moved slightly in a wave-like motion and for whatever reason that was, it made her look even more like a child. I have grabbed some long weeds and straws that got burnt in the sun and were no longer green but gold and copper and braided a crown out of them. That day I have made her a queen. Queen of the light. Queen of all the lost children.

The first time we’ve met – it was at the seaside. She stood in the water and the tidal waves, that were getting more violent with every minute, crashed on her legs and tried to knock her off her feet. She swayed visibly but didn’t move – just stared at the horizon line. I watched all of that from the cliff above: too far to do anything and too close to be able to ignore it. From afar she looked like a birch splinter sticking out from the dark and angry palm of the sea. It started raining and the water was already as high as her waist. I remember this calm and very clear nothingness that filled my head. At this very moment she turned into my direction and waved at me, pointing at the beach.

When I got to the spot, she was already there. For a moment she stared at me with a hard to decipher look on her face – something between amusement and anger. “It wouldn't be fair for you” she finally said and that’s all that has ever been spoken about this bizarre stand-off between the sea, her and me – we've never mentioned it again.

With another explosion that I still can’t hear glass from the last remaining window falls to my feet. I can see tiny sharp splinters falling, as if in the slow motion, on me. Bloody freckles appear on my skin but it’s OK – it doesn't hurt. A lot of things stopped hurting some time ago…

I can feel her moving. Her cold fingers land on my face – she looks at me without blinking, with a very faint smile. I (faint-) smile back. Her lips move and even though I can’t hear her voice I know she just said: “We are about to die”. I nod and pull her towards myself. In the very pointless shelter of my arms she rests her head on my chest. We wait.

Lights out.