The Destruction Of Dandelions.

I turn over to my other side, extend my arm and search for him with my fingers. The discovery that the bed is empty beside me causes a completely unnecessary, almost paroxysmal response, I go from deep slumber to sitting upright in a matter of seconds. I get out of bed, pick up my long, black T-shirt off the floor and pull it on over my throbbing head. I am so thirsty. I look around the room and find my bottle on his side of the bed, as I walk to it I notice, on the dressing table, the dandelion I brought home last evening has died. Only a fine stooping stalk droops in the tiny makeshift vase, whatever remains of the floret lays disintegrated under it, like little specks of ash, you cannot even tell they came from something that once had life. I love dandelions, but this is what they do. They fall apart, with such remarkable ease, their seemingly perfect structure is always only a swift breeze away from total decimation, yet I am always surprised when it happens. A dandelion comes undone before my eyes every single day, yet each destruction seems so portentous, as if it will never happen again.

I turn my back on the dead dandelion and drink my water. Half of my mouth is swollen, as much of the water pours into my mouth as onto my shirt, but I am so thirsty I do not care. I will let it drench me, so long as it quenches me as well. As I put the bottle down, I hear the unmistakable creak of the tiny little gate, I stride quickly across the room, but I know I am not really moving fast, everything feels a little bit slowed down this morning. My mind grasps at fallen petals for meaning and explanation, words blow away from me in the wind and my muscles refuse to cooperate with my commands to move, as if afraid that if they shake too vigorously, I will fall apart on the floor.

By the time I reach outside, he has unleashed the dog and is filling up her bowl of water. His back is turned to me, he doesn't see me immediately, or hear me, at all. The quietude in my soul is so potent, it appears to have the power to silence everything I touch. The door doesn't creak, the chair slides, without a sound, out of my way, my footsteps are muffled, I have forgotten how to breathe. My usually bellicose, enthusiastic self is so absent from inside me, you would think it never existed. I stand against the wall, leaning onto it with my back as I watch the angry, black clouds over his head. It has been grey for days, threatening, but I know, today it will rain. The daytime darkness is fatidic. He turns around and notices me, as the dog laps up water from her little bowl.

"You're awake," he says, taking a few short steps towards me, and then standing there looking at me.

We don't exchange words, but I can see everything that he is thinking. He can see everything that I am feeling. I can hear him play the night that has just passed in his memory. In his eyes, I can see myself, leaning against a different wall, as he punches my cheekbones, over and over again, until I dissolve from pain to pliance. I can see myself panic as he chokes me with my hair, threatening to let me pass out and forcing me not to react with my body, not to act out of the emotion of fear. Sometimes, I think he is the best meditation teacher in the world. The way he looks at me, I try to retreat into the wall, making my shoulders smaller, pushing my back against the concrete as if a portal to invisibility will open up to engulf me for just one moment. His gaze feels like his hands are still on me, tossing and assaulting me, like a ragdoll made up of the discarded scraps of other people's beauty. There is so much between us right now. I think it was Nabokov who wrote, "How small the cosmos in comparison to human consciousness, to a single human recollection and its expression in words," and I understand it, sometimes the eternal vastness of the universe feels like a speck of ash in light of everything contained within my heart.

He looks beautiful, so intact, as if I didn't see him beside himself, drunk, in the bacchanalian revelry of intimate violence. He comes close to me, leans over me, placing one palm against the wall over my head. His body presses into mine and even though I am held in place by an unyielding structure and a wall, I feel myself losing my balance. I put my hand against his chest, it steadies me and it helps me breathe. I did that last night, too, I can feel the impression of that hand, like a residue with no chemical properties. A thing that doesn't exist. Yet I can feel it, underneath my own fingers, like I am holding hands with a version of myself that is laying dead on the floor inside. I look at my hand, as if I expect him, like last night, to tear it from his skin and twist it behind my back for having the audacity to touch him, even before I look up at him to demand response or permission, I can tell he knows what I am thinking. The closeness, this searing intimacy between us, is the most exposed I have ever been in my life. Me, the person who wears her heart on her sleeve, her tongue on her head and speaks her life as if it is a matter of public record, has never felt seen the way he sees me. It's because I take my noise to world and I bring my silence only to him. No one else will ever know my silence, they cannot see what I have shown him. He smiles at my fingers, a little smile, not a joyous one, nor one that is especially evil, like a touch little less than innocuous, that doesn't speak of depravity at all, but reminds of it in droves.

"There is something so destroyed about you this morning," he says, cupping my face in his other hand.

He kisses me. His lips are so gentle, they barely graze me at all, but my response is disproportionate, a monochromatic abandoned circus comes into teeming technicolor life in one ephemeral moment; my structure is not stable enough to support the stimulus of his touch, it isn't equipped to dance in his hues, it doesn't remember how to do its tricks. I buckle, I release all semblance of control from my body, remaining upright only because I am helped up by external forces. He holds my face up to look at him, in the distance I can hear the gardeners weeding and the maintenance workers arriving for the day, but I can only feel his thumb stroking the warm, swollen bruise on my cheek. He isn't hurting me, or he wouldn't be, if I wasn't already so vulnerable, his touch is just a smidge below gentle but the steadiness of his hand is prophetic. He holds black clouds inside the palm of his hand, and even as they pass quietly over my skin, unassuming and pleasant, they threaten to rain down on me. He pushes his thumb into my swollen cheek, just a little bit as he pulls back from me, I cry out before I lose the support in my legs. A steady breeze and all my petals have fallen to the ground. He leans down and pulls my head up by my hair, it sounds violent but it's calm, he looks calm, yet in the depths of his empty eyes I can see the storm brewing. It will rain and I will be destroyed.

"I wish I could cease this moment here forever," he says, before kissing the cries that escape my mouth.

A dandelion comes undone before his eyes every single day, yet each destruction seems so portentous, as if it will never happen again.