The Rails Beneath
Our Bed
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Anna Karenina
Cigarettes After Sex
I kept my footsteps quiet when I returned. There were entire afternoons spent in the old diner by the crossing, watching the traffic lights change from green to amber, which I never once mentioned to you. You never asked about the faint scent of damp newspapers on my jacket, and I never offered a map of my meandering routes. It was a silent agreement built entirely on omissions. I simply tucked my withheld words into the pockets of coats I no longer wore. You knew my body was firmly tethered to yours, but my afternoons belonged to an anonymous version of myself, moving through a city that didn't know my name.
We were caught in each other's gravity. I watched the way you peeled off your cotton shirt by the edge of the water, the fabric sticking briefly to the dampness of your shoulders before falling to the concrete. The sudden splash broke the heavy, oppressive night heat. Later, in the unlit house, with the chlorine still drying on your skin and mixing with the smell of the impending storm, the weight of you pressing down felt absolute. We were entirely entangled, the knots pulled so tight that the lack of an exit felt terrifyingly like a relief.
Interlude: The Russian Novel
The thick paperback copy of the Russian novel sat on the nightstand for weeks, its spine cracked halfway through. I reached the final pages while you were asleep, the sound of your uneven breathing filling the heavy silence of the bedroom. As the iron wheels crushed the snow on the page, the quiet violence of it spilled into the room. You shifted in your sleep, throwing a heavy arm across my chest, pinning me to the mattress. I didn't try to move.
The train always arrives, eventually. It is just a matter of scheduling and patience. I lay there in the dark, feeling the low, steady vibration of your pulse spreading through the sheets, realizing the iron rails had already been laid down right beneath our bed.
We had locked the heavy wooden doors from the inside and left the brass keys at the bottom of the deep water outside. The pages of the book fluttered slightly in a stray breeze. I kept my eyes open in the dark, watching the ceiling shadows warp, completely resigned to the tracks we were laid on.
A Quiet Morning By The Drained Pool
Morning arrives, but it changes nothing. I walk out to the backyard. The pool is perfectly still, the drain choked with wet pine needles. I pick up the damp paperback from the patio table, its swollen pages stiff and warped from the night's humidity. I sit on the edge of the cracked concrete, looking down at the dark water, listening to the sound of the screen door opening behind me. There is no packed bag. There is no driveway to pull out of. We are exactly where we were last night. I close the book and let it rest on my lap.
Sonorous Echoes & Similar Fates
Mazzy Star
— Fade Into You"The moment you stop searching for the door and let someone else's darkness become the only room you know."
Men I Trust
— Show Me How"Floating face-up in the still water long after midnight, when the humid air sits so heavy on your chest that leaving feels like a physical impossibility."
Teethe
— Tag"The pale morning light on a closed book, and all the sentences you underlined but never read aloud to anyone."
Beach House
— Space Song"A slow, inevitable pull toward the bottom of something beautiful, your hands open, the brass keys already gone."
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