The Fun We've Had by Michael J Seidlinger

Author:Michael J Seidlinger [Seidlinger, Michael J]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fun
Publisher: Lazy Fascist Press
Published: 2014-05-27T20:00:00+00:00

HIS TURN

He met her eye-to-eye, blinked when she blinked, and breathed out when she pretended to breathe. He saw a sweaty, double-chinned, bald face, a face so familiar, it took him this long to get the lines right. It took an entire life; by now, those lines were the length of waves headed in no clear direction.

He met her mouth with his and then said, “Are we having fun?” Imagining what she might be thinking, he bartered another “I love you,” and watched the sparkle in those eyes.

How dull he must appear to her from behind those old, apathetic eyes. Desperate though he may have been, he bargained that she saw only a fraction of the sunlight, understood only a small flicker of his apology.

“I love you” was her response.

“I love you” was his only reply.

“I love you” once again, he began to see tears welling up, tears that had seldom been shed from those sorrowful, admittedly unremarkable eyes.

He said it again, and watched as they started down her face. He wiped them away before they could travel down her cheek; dragging a finger across her face forced him to feel the various blemishes and pockmarks, grime and skin tearing of a body he had misused.

“I love you,” he said and meant every word.

“I love you,” she replied and seemed to retreat into that body. Their faces flush, hands held, potbelly and nearly flat-breasted chest pressed, he could sense her fleeing him in the one way possible. He had so much to tell her.

He met her fault with his, which came out as a forlorn and melancholy “I love you.”

It is admirable to see someone care about another so much that he’d say anything to conceal true feeling, to keep her here. I love you, I love you, I love you—repeated in a rhythm that matched what’s missing:

A heartbeat.

Blurred sight, tears fell. His, much like hers, was a silent cry, tears that blinded him as much as they seemed to blind her.

And though they continued to look, they could no longer see. All he saw was the cloudy black of those two eyes.

This was the result of forced feeling, and though they felt, neither him nor her could grasp the language to let it all out.

They settled on “I love you.” He laundered feeling underneath the word “love.” When the tears did not stop, he languished, feeling an all-too-familiar loneliness. Blinded by the tears, he no longer saw her. All he could smell was his own body odor, his own foul breath, as she exhaled in panicked, practiced bursts. He closed the eyes, opened them, and closed them again. He flushed the fresh tears, letting them fall down the borrowed body’s cheeks, her rosy cheeks, and felt each eyelid. He felt as her eyes anxiously moved left to right, as if reading how this will end.

What you must do.

He opened the eyes and used the same fingers to feel them out of their sockets. He handed them back to her alongside a forlorn, apologetic “I love you.

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