it was instant. the shapeshifting sort of amity that makes you sometimes feel like a secret-sharing cousin, and at others like buying the most delicate lace for his fingers to scratch through to the skin, trying for bone, knuckles be damned.
the first shape was of a well worn pillow and it made her think of the turin shroud and whose head caused its slope and frayed terrycloth. select words were flickers like lightning bugs on humid, creaky evenings in late summer down south. he'd say lightning bug too, instead of firefly, she was sure of it.
pinpricks of recognition that this conversation was just a gauze veiling future pulses, unready still for the yellow lights of back or street corners, occasionally shot through her and she hoped she didn't visibly twitch in front of the others at the table. she rubbed her thumb hard across a knotty pine scar.
right now she feels like he's taken her belly and stretched it into her throat, which is ready to squeal, or vomit. she's felt this before, with the others, the hippies. it's always slightly different and is like being given a challenging gift.
she's not supposed to hold on this time, though, and isn't sure how he found her. she removed the battery about three years ago, an unthinking whack she didn't feel for seasons. but he was a pristine find, smelling vaguely of the dust collecting between feathered caps at vintage shops...and cigarettes. (he)arts don't stop.
muses.
