forty-four

02:16:57

I'm sleepless in Beirut.

Lumière is in bed and I'm on his computer. 

"You should write something"

Should I? Who am I writing for now? I will write for the ghosts of my past who still haunt every precious corner. My precious ghosts who vanish as soon as I touch them.

I saw Botticelli tonight. 

"T'as vraiment changé. Douce.  Zen. T'es une femme. T'es une femme."

He was the same. I was myself now. We were different. No bitter history, just smiles and curled up legs on the sofa and the comfort of having known the before and the comfort of being able to be in the present. We hugged for a long time. No weapons of yesterday, no record books of who was left behind and who emerged unbruised, no dirty laundry. Fresh sheets, fresh shave, fresh stories to tell.

"Shoo betkhabrina?"

"I did something crazy. I went to London to meet a complete stranger."

"Khawta."

"It's amazing how much you can connect without actually meeting a person."

"And find that the reality is different?"

"Non, pas vraiment. The first few days were great, but then there was a cut." I motioned scissors. "The last day was horrible."

"Tu tombes toujours sur des malades."

But it takes two. We named them des cas spéciaux. I'm attracted to impossible cases. He's attracted to incompatible cases. What are we running from?

But it takes two. I'm an impossible case and he's incompatible and together we are im- and in- and we can stare at the ceiling and think of the harsh light that obliges us to be frank and awake to our reality. Botticelli's will always be an honest space where nudity is just another mask on the wall staring down at us.

But my reality is not a moment and it is not really there anymore for me to own. But there, I can own up to it because there is nothing to lose anymore. The battle has been forgotten and the battlefield is an overgrown patch of wild field where leaves of grass are fresh and soft on our soles.

My reality is in this room where it has set up camp. A nomadic reality that shelters us and gathers us underneath the sheets, sometimes a bundle of writhing limbs and sometimes a body with four legs and arms breathing with one pulse and sometimes two pairs of eyes that look into the distance and do not meet. To be separate in the together is the impossible, but it is the element that makes us compatible. Lumière is dark and darkness I have always found appealing. To be blind and undistracted, to concentrate on peeling away the bed linen, the clothes, the translucent skin, the Myocardiocyteal muscle tissue, the opaque bones, the thoughts, the secrets, until there is nothing but light.