I did not speak as she showed me her scars. Her words, as she displayed them, were lambent in the darkness of the club, in the ambience of despair. No shaking in her voice; no reticence recounting the days she almost died. The wind—I could think nothing more. Her breath was warm on my cheek, as she leaned closer to my ear. She wanted to be heard, and I wanted to hear. The music was deafening.
A straw-haired girl danced naked on the stage. She stroked herself and begged for dollars, and might as well have been invisible. We both had no regard to spare.
I asked too many questions, but she didn’t seem to mind. She thought before speaking, gave power to her answers. Spiderweb cracks in the hard glass of her ambivalence. She had a son once. No more…so lost. And her favorite time was with grandpa in the snow. But this was white noise, the iron from which her steel was forged.
Our words were lost. The song changed, and another dancer took stage to pander. I sipped my drink, considered another, and lit a cigarette instead. She lit her own. Shift in the chair. Re-cross the legs. Search the unclothed bodies in the room for anything but the taunting draw of the silence between us. I struggled to endure. She stared far off, at nothing and everything at once—the horrible, paradoxical union so natural and familiar to me. Our smoke entombed us, the silence nailing the coffin shut. The wind.
“Happiness, to me, is my daughter playing and laughing in the yard. Having my boy back and watching them both. But she’s so sick…”—trailing off. “I’m sorry; you probably don’t want to hear all this—”
The wind.
No. Go on.
She did, and I felt terrible. What do you say to something like that? How do you respond to what cannot be helped?
Her eyes were glass, but she held true. No shaking in her voice. Not now. The wind.
I told her time was never right, but wouldn’t always be so wrong. She would have more days like ones with grandpa in the snow. I stood and embraced her, and whispered goodbyes into her ear. She walked away, to take the stage herself, and I left the darkness once again.
Sometimes we all can beat the wind.
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Submission Name: The Wind
