Sublimation

Something fished out of the archives.

It was all so clear in her head.

She would slip her arm into his, look straight into his eyes so he would know she wasn’t joking and say the lines with the blasé seriousness of someone making a general suggestion on the lines of adding more blue in the wardrobe, a better haircut, the effectiveness of odomos over mortein, a walk around the perimeters. The harmlessness of the tone would befuddle him into indecision, beguile him into consideration, and then bewitch him into acquiescence. A possibility, that’s all. But a possibility, all the same.

And she was confident in her ability to weave an eloquent spell. He would perhaps consent to the careless cadence of her voice or to the simplicity of her logic or the silky smoothness of the summer night. It was all so perfect in the infinite canvas of her flamboyant fancy: A beautiful dance of truthful artifice, performed in perfect grace like an ancient bolero on a spicy Spanish evening. There was no way he could elude the spell. He wouldn’t want to.

Confidence overflowing, she placed a hand on his shoulder and got ready with the practiced opening line.But as she looked into his lambent eyes her tongue cemented itself to the roof of her mouth and the words beat a pulsing brand against her closed lips. It wasn’t dissemblance; she believed every single one of those unsaid words. But the cost of it stared out from his trusting eyes. The steady guileless vulnerability that made him seek her out glinted like the edge of a knife as she tried ineffectually to put her plan into action. People told her he was ripe for the plucking. He would comply simply because he was so alone. Besides, he trusted her...

And the unsaid confessions crackling noisily in her mouth were swallowed in a dry, husky trail of vain hopes withered yet again.

He was waiting for her to say something, but she couldn’t free her otherwise glib tongue. “Why so serious?” he joked and she choked out a convincing chuckle. The conversations flying around the sputtering bonfire permeated the air with a banked buzz, filling the blank spaces left behind by the words she didn’t say. Someone laughed, someone else cried, someone debated, someone else berated. His quiet sadness lay wide open in the noise, crowding her expanding heart into a tight little corner, where it crumbled like dry earth, emptying its overcrowded insides into her more crowded soul. His head hung low, and the words hummed sadly in the baritone thrumming of the blood in her veins. She laid her hand on his and he smiled that familiar sad smile. “Don’t worry, I’ll be fine.” he says. She smiled eloquently, her lips replete with meanings he could never guess at or wouldn’t see. They hugged each other close with the sincere, comfortable camaraderie of true friends that filled empty spaces regardless of unsaid words. He sighed a quiet sigh. And unseen she sighed silent words, letting them diffuse into the dark night to find their home with the other voiceless words, floating away into the starry expanse of open sky while she remained earthbound in incomplete embrace.