World by Aelius Blythe Page B

screens
become too cold, we'll keep each other warm.
     
    :-)
     
     
    TWO
     
    My love,
     
    I thought of you today.
    I thought of going outside with you.
    One day.
    No need to rush. Maybe it will be an
accident. Maybe one day when we're together in our little apartment
settling in to watch a movie, we'll call for pizza and the delivery
queue will be too long. Maybe we'll have to visit one of our sick
aunts. Maybe we'll need groceries and the delivery fee will be too
high. Maybe the birds will be particularly loud or the sun
particularly bright or the blooms on the lilacs particularly
sweet.
    Whatever the reason, we'll go out.
     
    Today, I thought about that.
    About us going outside together.
    One day.
    When we get a moment we'll lay in the sun.
It will be hot and we'll wonder at how hot it is. We'll wonder at
how hot the sun is on our skin, even through our clothes. We'll
wonder at how hot the sun is, how much hotter on our skin than on
the other side of a window. And how much brighter, too! We'll turn
our heads to the side because we can't look up at it.
    It will be nice.
    We'll lay in the sun on the grass. The grass
will be prickly on the backs of our necks and on our arms if
they're bare, but soft everywhere else. Maybe there will be some
things crawling around us, but we'll just brush them away.
    It will be so nice!
     
    Other people will laugh.
    Other people will laugh and say, "It's not
so hot!" Or "The sun, so what? I see it every day!" But we can lay
together in the grass – turn your face into the grass and smell it,
isn't it nice? – and we'll appreciate it. We'll appreciate the hot
sun and the bright sunlight and the grass and the fresh air.
    Other people will laugh because they think
we're funny.
    We'll laugh too.
    But we'll laugh because we love it. We will.
The sun and the light and the grass and the air. Like it was the
first time to see it all, we'll love it.
     
    When the sun gets too hot or the breeze gets
too cold or the grass gets too damp, we'll go inside and remember
how nice it was to lay in the sun and the breeze and the grass.
Maybe we'll open the curtains after that and look at it from
inside.
     
    When we're old we'll have nice skin.
     
    Won't it be nice?
     
    :-)
     
     
    THREE
     
    My love,
     
    You know that video of the little dog and
the baby? The one with the pink ball and the baby on the bed and
the little dog – a little white one bouncing and bouncing and
bouncing, it was fluffy, too. I love it. You know the one?
    (It's the one you just sent me a minute
ago.)
    I sent it to you last week.
    When I saw it just now – just now when you
sent it to me – I smiled. Not at the baby, not at the bouncing
puppy. At you. And me. And how in sync we are.
    I smiled.
    Thank you.
     
    :-)

 
     
    Alive
     
    Stoppit.
    The sniffling didn't stop.
    The black swatch of a sleeve's edge wavered
in the doorway. It curled around the doorknob, quietly, gently.
Veins ran down a worn hand to fidgeting nails tapping on the brass
handle. The dark fabric, the veiny hand, the fidgeting nails
flashed one moment. Then they were gone.
    But the sniffling continued.
    Stoppit.
    A light switch snapped. Yellow light
flickered in from the hall.
    Peter flinched.
    The light poked at the corner of his eye
from the corner around which the black sleeve had disappeared.
Infuriatingly soft and dim, it was worse than no light at all. The
darkness inside the room was better. The dim yellowness on his
periphery irritated his eyes, his head, even worked his way down to
his stomach and made him want to be sick. He turned towards the
doorway and squinted in the unnatural light.
    The shadows in the hallway did not
notice.
    Elbows rested on crossed arms, heads bent,
hands fidgeted, fluttering lips whispered. Clustered in the soft
light, the shadows worried.
    "I miss him."
    "I know..."
    "I don't know... I don't know."
    Stoppit.
    Peter grit his teeth against the whispering,
as if that could silence it. It didn't. The whisperers didn't