We are like old lovers who find ourselves face to face after many long and silent years.  We are somehow the same, in spite of our changes, and our hug is as slow and awkward as aging itself.

We are that first puff of black smoke, shooting out from the end of some rusted exhaust pipe, not caring whether or not the engine turns over, or if more smoke will follow, or even if those depending upon something bigger than us will get whatever it is they are wanting.  The world is a big place.  This is what we think as we float and drift and break apart in the wind.  Such a big place.  And yet we have somehow been trapped inside of it for so very long.

We are that moment after the knock, but before the door opens.  That feeling after the short walk down the hallway, that brief instant right after you’ve glanced through the peephole but haven’t yet thought what it means.  We are the sound of the door opening, that burst of fresh, afternoon air on your face, and the shortness of the silence between you and this stranger.  Ironic, you think, how silence can seem so much like the impatience in children, anxious to rush in without a thought to where it is going.

We are soldiers marching in perfect order, crisp and clean and stripped of reason, and through closed eyes we watch the battle and listen to those boots pound across the inside of our skull.  We are foot soldiers, dug in and determined, dreaming of simple things.  We are hope.  We are expendable.  We are victory at any cost.

And we are stars and gases and trips planned but untaken, secrets buried deep and treasure maps scratched into the scraps of wood we found washed ashore while we walked, side by side.  We are the argument that is forever left for later, the unsolvable riddle that moves in and out of memory, the dried crumbs left lying on the saucer, wondering where the rest of life has gone.  We are the way shadow follows light, the way a kiss knows the touch of another’s lips, the way thought follows movement and movement follows thought.  We are eyes closed in the dark, searching our dreams for the light.

You’re there every time I open my eyes, sweating and out of breath, standing at the side of the bed naked and scared, a silhouette against the palest of moonlight.  Your breathing wakes me, the heaving of your chest and the frantic look in your eyes that I can’t see, but feel staring down at me.  Not a word, not a gesture, nothing except another unsuccessful attempt to make it through the night without all the fear.  But the nights are long, one after another, and making it is out of the question.  Sleep is out of the question.  Who can sleep, with you standing there over them like that?  Who can roll over and close their eyes against so much unknown?

I roll back the covers, wishing now that the fan was pointed in another direction, wishing now that it hadn’t felt so good against the side of my face as I fell asleep, hoping that you wouldn’t show up, wishing now that for once there would be something out there, something to see other than more night, more darkness and shadows blended together into the color of fear, something, anything, anything that will explain why you drag me out of bed each night to stare out the window with you.  I could hate you for this.  I could hate you for how tired I am, for standing over me like you do, wet with fear.  I could hate you for picking me or for counting on me or for a hundred other reasons that I’m too tired now to think about.  I could hate you for just about everything, except that I can’t.  I can’t because looking out the window, my eyes slowly adjusting to the moonlight, my ear turned out slightly, trying desperately to catch some sound, I understand your fear.  Worse, I know your fear.  The fan may blow against my back, but it is that cold unknown blowing now against my face that forces me to draw up inside myself, as the two of us, side by side, stare out at nothing.