prompt fic: Jellyfish
This is my (late) little ficlet for bleodswean's prompt-a-thon. The prompt was, "My first thought was that he lied with every word." I struggled all week to come up with something, then we visited the aquarium yesterday. :)
Her first thought was that he lied with every word.
“Things are good. Business is growing. Everything is under control.”
Control, she thinks, as she watches the jellyfish pulse and float in the tank in front of them. Just one more thing they offered up with both hands, one more thing washed out of their palms like so much sand in the indifferent sea.
He’d looked at her hard, back when she suggested this place. Like maybe she was making some kind of tasteless joke. But this is her way; she likes to sit with things. Hard things, happy things. The things that try to drown us. But he is always looking forward, and cannot understand.
Still, he comes every Sunday and they sit beside each other in front of the huge glass wall holding back the ocean on display. She would like to touch his hand, curled around the peeling edge of the bench beside her knee, but the distance between them, four fingertips, feels suddenly too vast. She can still remember how his hand felt against the side of her head, his fingers threaded through her wet hair and pressing her face into the salt-crusted cotton of his chest, as the boat tossed and shook and took on water. And now they don’t touch, and he sits here and tells her small lies about this life they bought so dearly.
She has been reduced to helpless, radical honesty. “I get up, go to work. No one understands me. They shift their eyes away. I go home and crawl back into bed. I don’t leave my bed for anything else. I can’t even read anymore. All the words have abandoned me.”
“My mother says the Aleppo pines are dropping their cones.” This is code, too. She had seen on Facebook last week, how the bomb had ripped through the dense neighborhood of houses where his family lives. His mother, at least, is safe. She wonders about his fiancé, the young woman he’d barely known but agreed to marry a few months before the city turned into fire. She cannot, will never ask. Because every possible answer is terrible.
The jellyfish float on, first one way, then another. Their translucent sacks expanding and contracting like heartbeats, tentacles trailing like memory. “What do you see?”, she asks, like she did last time, and the time before. The jellyfish are her clouds now; she has long since given up looking toward the sky.
A blossom, unfolding. Two umbrellas tangled together. The lace on my younger sister’s best dress.
The corners of his mouth turn up, just a little, like an echo of something she heard a long time ago. “A mushroom,” he points. “And there, a rolled-up plastic bag.” He doesn’t speak for a long minute, then his thumb brushes against her, softly over the back of her hand. “That one is your hair drying in the sun.”
Maybe neither of us lies or speaks the truth. Maybe we’re just tracing the shape of what we can’t say.
She could trace the shape of his shoulders and the spot where his hair curls against his neck in her sleep, does trace it every night in her dreams. The way they rose, tense mountains in front of her at the train station. Their inward, defeated curve at the camp. “You still smell like apples,” she says. “Do you remember that night we spent in the orchard?”
Your face above me, with the dawn rising behind you and your hands the only warmth in the world, is cut into my heart like the etching on a stone.
His breath catches, and he swallows loudly. “Did you remember to turn in your final paperwork?” he says, his voice low, and sweet like honeyed milk. “And don’t forget to stop at the store I told you about. Mention my name to the man behind the counter. You need warm boots. It will be winter soon.”
I miss you, they’re saying.
I long for you. You are a hole in the middle of my life and I dream constantly of letting myself fall.
“I think the jellyfish are my favorite,” she tells him, and leans into him, just a little.
His fingers catch and tangle with hers. “It’s a good city. Things will get better.” He pulls his hand back the way little boys rip off their band-aids.
“Same time next week?” she asks as he stands. His fists are round in his pockets and he looks down at her. He sends half of the money he makes every month back to his family, and saves half of what’s left over to pay for their voyage here, someday. His hands are full already, but his face, gone soft under a million stars as she walked a dirt road between countries beside him, is all for her.
“Of course,” he says.
This new world is shit, too, but at least you’re still in it.
At least you’re still here.
Her first thought was that he lied with every word.
“Things are good. Business is growing. Everything is under control.”
Control, she thinks, as she watches the jellyfish pulse and float in the tank in front of them. Just one more thing they offered up with both hands, one more thing washed out of their palms like so much sand in the indifferent sea.
He’d looked at her hard, back when she suggested this place. Like maybe she was making some kind of tasteless joke. But this is her way; she likes to sit with things. Hard things, happy things. The things that try to drown us. But he is always looking forward, and cannot understand.
Still, he comes every Sunday and they sit beside each other in front of the huge glass wall holding back the ocean on display. She would like to touch his hand, curled around the peeling edge of the bench beside her knee, but the distance between them, four fingertips, feels suddenly too vast. She can still remember how his hand felt against the side of her head, his fingers threaded through her wet hair and pressing her face into the salt-crusted cotton of his chest, as the boat tossed and shook and took on water. And now they don’t touch, and he sits here and tells her small lies about this life they bought so dearly.
She has been reduced to helpless, radical honesty. “I get up, go to work. No one understands me. They shift their eyes away. I go home and crawl back into bed. I don’t leave my bed for anything else. I can’t even read anymore. All the words have abandoned me.”
“My mother says the Aleppo pines are dropping their cones.” This is code, too. She had seen on Facebook last week, how the bomb had ripped through the dense neighborhood of houses where his family lives. His mother, at least, is safe. She wonders about his fiancé, the young woman he’d barely known but agreed to marry a few months before the city turned into fire. She cannot, will never ask. Because every possible answer is terrible.
The jellyfish float on, first one way, then another. Their translucent sacks expanding and contracting like heartbeats, tentacles trailing like memory. “What do you see?”, she asks, like she did last time, and the time before. The jellyfish are her clouds now; she has long since given up looking toward the sky.
A blossom, unfolding. Two umbrellas tangled together. The lace on my younger sister’s best dress.
The corners of his mouth turn up, just a little, like an echo of something she heard a long time ago. “A mushroom,” he points. “And there, a rolled-up plastic bag.” He doesn’t speak for a long minute, then his thumb brushes against her, softly over the back of her hand. “That one is your hair drying in the sun.”
Maybe neither of us lies or speaks the truth. Maybe we’re just tracing the shape of what we can’t say.
She could trace the shape of his shoulders and the spot where his hair curls against his neck in her sleep, does trace it every night in her dreams. The way they rose, tense mountains in front of her at the train station. Their inward, defeated curve at the camp. “You still smell like apples,” she says. “Do you remember that night we spent in the orchard?”
Your face above me, with the dawn rising behind you and your hands the only warmth in the world, is cut into my heart like the etching on a stone.
His breath catches, and he swallows loudly. “Did you remember to turn in your final paperwork?” he says, his voice low, and sweet like honeyed milk. “And don’t forget to stop at the store I told you about. Mention my name to the man behind the counter. You need warm boots. It will be winter soon.”
I miss you, they’re saying.
I long for you. You are a hole in the middle of my life and I dream constantly of letting myself fall.
“I think the jellyfish are my favorite,” she tells him, and leans into him, just a little.
His fingers catch and tangle with hers. “It’s a good city. Things will get better.” He pulls his hand back the way little boys rip off their band-aids.
“Same time next week?” she asks as he stands. His fists are round in his pockets and he looks down at her. He sends half of the money he makes every month back to his family, and saves half of what’s left over to pay for their voyage here, someday. His hands are full already, but his face, gone soft under a million stars as she walked a dirt road between countries beside him, is all for her.
“Of course,” he says.
This new world is shit, too, but at least you’re still in it.
At least you’re still here.