Sketches

1.

She looks bored, and also bored of the present. Her brown hair, which looks darker from a distance, is not in an unsightly mess. She is quite mindful of how she looks, for from all her experience, only looks matter. The world is distant, at a distance from her. Even her framed portrait, nailed to the near wall looks estranged from her. That face glows with affectation, with deft and light make believe. The joys of times past mean nothing to an estranged present. Only the present matters, present love, present joys.Her finely manicured nails, the expensive shawl that covers her knees, the careless bored look on her face, these merge together, and united in an unwholesome whole, they suggest the cultivated boredom of that hour. But these images are deceptive, for we know nothing. We pretend that our glib words have described a person. We only alter reality with words for the truth of the matter is, she is neither waiting for someone nor has someone left her. She is mortally bored, of life, of herself, of the dense rain outside.Since we never asked her, she never spoke of the night traced across her face, of the dense meanings of the unlived night, of the pain of fixity. She does not believe, she has lost faith in love. Her face, still somehow expectant, waits for a future hope. That is only a guess.


2.

Everything is in the voice, the hesitant notes of the voice, in the waiting, in the expected prompting. He wants something that you cannot or do not want to give, both of you acknowledge the presence of that surmise, of that wall to admitting it. And yet you both speak of the weather, the frost that has settled in since yesterday, of the fog, the dense fog. But you return again to pursue the thread of this conversation, you are testing the water, he is testing you. And you know that it is you, you must acknowledge the presence of this tension, of this thing that cannot be mentioned, for it does not matter how much frost has settled outside, who cares about the fog so long as you come out of this conversation unharmed, so you think, and he tells you exactly without saying it, now exactly, the thing that you both cannot speak about or express in words. The catch is in the voice, in the words, the hardness is in the inflection and not in the frost. This conversation has failed you because you have failed him.