Refraction

Prose from SHS.

Photo by Adam Bignell on Unsplash, edited by Slaidey Valheim.

It wasn’t that I couldn’t see the hairline fractures
spiderwebbed around his neck.

I liked the way they drew attention to his vulnerability;
split glass snaking under his band shirt
shifting unevenly,
creating pure catastrophic noise.

I had some crawling through my hairline,
up the curve of my side,
sealed with make-shift resin
— impossible to hear.

For a time, it felt like a treasure spending time in the light
that escaped from each other’s ever-shifting empty spaces;
blinding ourselves with beautiful refractions through open wounds,
taking turns twirling like prisms dangling in a window
and bathing in rainbows.

That paradise turned to a slow creeping
— cracks snapping deeper —
and never filling.

Mirror pieces fluxed into distortion;
disconnect.

He didn’t notice the tiny pick I wedged in his collarbone
or the love taps I bestowed it every night.