The Hush Beside

 

A pause. A brief silence. A word stock in the throat.

 

Eyelids fluttering butterfly wings.

 

Frozen points. Suspended lines. An empty space. I set off.

 

A rectangle in the dry earth. A spiral drawn by a spinning top. Wind. A cloud of dust. It comes to rest upon the lines on the ground. I throw a stone at the spinning top. The stone caught by a line, a transparent white thread. It could be hair, it could be nothing. I pull the thread. The stone draws a line on the ground in my direction. I calculate the distance between me and the rectangle. I make out several diagonals, from the ground to the height of my chest.

 

The wind implodes. My gaze devours all it sees. The blank sheet of paper. Thought unspoken. The line flows towards the paper. Silhouettes. The memory there. I move my head, the image remains. A mapping spreads out in front of me. Fragments of the landscape. Just colour. Just light and dark. The light gets lighter, the dark darker. Into the distance. The vertical lines dissolve. The horizontal remain. The fragments become endless lines in the panorama. A function with several variables. Measurements of the mouldable.

 

Air bubbles filled her brain. They had settled there. Those expanses of air spun the memories, intertwining with the timeless void. The bubbles worked like magnifying lenses. Owing to their shape, or beyond their shape. Bubbles in the brain as self-observatories. Magnifying lenses. Space. Distance.