Thursday, December 9, 2010

Your Inner Contours

Some places we're not allowed to go. Some places have big, heavy, imposing gaurds with suits of steel armor and long, sharp blades standing at attention by their sides. They are the dark hallways. The places no one is permitted. It's where the No Trespassing signs get painted in bright red paint, strung up on wooden planks and bolted to the door.

Sometimes there are dogs on the other side of the walls. Ferocious dogs. Barking and sniffing, growling and scratching. I imagine them pacing back and forth. On the other side of your wall. Where the child who was hurt still lives. Where the angry oger squats in a corner, by a picture of himself. Or is it a picture of his mother?

There are moments like tonight, when I get just a little too close to one of these walls or one of these doors. And something leaps out from some small hole in the wall I hadn't known about, a hole a part of me brushed up against. I feel the sharp sting of a bite, a wound quick and deep into my unsuspecting thigh. Soft flesh. The vulnerable teeth of your fearful dogs.

I leap at the nip. Right out of bed. Right off my seat. Right out of the room, with you. Then we are both alone, and I wonder... if it is only suddenly that we are alone, or if it is again. Or maybe, we are always alone, and I only know it when I get too close to being near you.

1 comment:

  1. I like this. I find places inside too that are scary, and guarded. You write about it so well. And the idea of being alone, especially as you are close to another.

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