'Sometimes,' he confesses, not for the first time, 'you confuse me.'

I turn to him, away from the window and the grey sky held in place there. He is lying askew upon the rough floor. His shirt unbuttoned and twisted around him, his pants at his ankles. One shoe is lost in the room. His eyes are blue and clear and he is watching me because it is something he likes to do.

'Do you want a world without mystery?' I ask him. And he laughs.

His laugh changes the space around me for a moment. I feel it close and taut along my skin. And for just a moment I consider that I could stay and the entire world might focus into a single shape and he would hold me.

His laugh changes the way I think for a moment. I consider arranging the furniture around it into the shape of a nice warm room at the center of an inviting house. I could choose the wallpaper and the curtains to match the texture of his laugh. I could find the colors which mimicked the quality of his caress. A room around the laugh, a house around the room, a quaint village around the house.

His laugh is a different place to settle. Like a stone at the bottom of a fast moving stream. A location which I might share. He touches my arm. And for an instant I don't consider the window, the blue grey sky, the door ajar.
 
I have already vanished. And one day his fingers will push into the folds of my clothes and find that I am gone.

 

 
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