28
by Mickey M.
© January 2004

for jchalo

Inside your head the words beat in time with your pulse; a steady rhythm that's as soothing as it is maddening.

You don't know what the words sound like since they never make it out of your mind. All you can hear are the echoes of what they should be, shouted into a wasteland of pure, blinding white that you recognize, can see, but never can touch.

"Blue skies, blue eyes," you whisper, the words strange and bitter on your tongue. "Leather, weather, wear a pair, a pair of blue eyes."

Everything is linear in this place. If you touch A, it slides to B, becomes C. It's neat and ordered in your mind, with the silent words shouted into nothing, bouncing back to you in whispers higher than your own, shades and shadows of things you can't see can only feel.

The sky makes you think of blue, blue eyes watching you, waiting for something, and you stare up at it until your own eyes burn. Sometimes when you blink, because eventually you have to blink, for a moment - quick as raindrops trickling down, bits of the sky falling - you see brown, instead. Beautiful brown eyes that sparkle at you in happiness, that deepen and darken into cold, dark holes in anger.

Today they're sorrowful, peering at you through the looking glass. Other words join the ones in your head, dance and sing with them before reaching out to snatch them up. You shrink back and cover your ears; if you can't hear them, they can't get inside you.

"You do boo blue." It's a chant again, quiet and rhythmic and you let it lull you, calm you, your fingers hard against your throat, feeling the beat there, too.

"Brown, wound, down, over and over and never and clever." These words sting, harsh and rough against your tongue. "Tongue, young, fun."

Fun. Fun was playing, singing, dancing, drinking, sleeping, loving. You loved, once, when you could see things beyond the words that can't escape your head. You see it...him. Him. You see him standing above you then bending close to whisper, and it slides into your brain and down your spine, dragging your words with it, melding them into his words.

"JC. JC see me see JC me see lonely only me me JC-"

They're not his words. They're your words in his voice. Pretty voice, pretty eyes, and yours burn with salt drops, because you know you're missing something. You can see it, taste it, smell it, but it floats just out of your reach, disappearing into the wind, beyond your touch.