The Cave

I once had a heartbreak that registered a solid 9 on the Richter scale. For one year, five months and sixteen days, the aftershocks sent me into a cave with my cat, and we sat in repose until it was safe to come out. In that interval, my only means of contact with the outside world were on party lines. I eavesdropped on lonely people groping through the wires to find someone to touch. Unexpectedly, I met a friend there. Every night, the voice of my friend, deep and sonorous would ask, "Tell me about today." There would be nothing new to report, as my days started to blend together in a murky shade of grey. There were the mechanics of domestic life: the cave needed plastering due to a drip in the ceiling, and the cat was always complaining about the bats. My friend listened intently to these things, but never volunteered the minutiae of his hours.

Instead, he spoke frequently of forests where trees stemmed diamond-shaped leaves in various hues of green, dripping with humidity. Insects would dance through them, neon-coloured and honeyed tongued. He loved the almost-darkness of these emerald cathedrals, the half-light of foliage. He had walked through such forests and wanted to return. Once I asked him to tell me the meaning of rapture, and he told me about women he brought home from a bar that he frequented. Raven-haired sirens dressed in low-cut tops and pencil skirts, women with the scent of patchouli at the nape of their necks. He told me he was hairless, his skin a sheath of silk that would sink in to the water of their skins. I listened to him smoke cigarettes between words - the sharp intakes and slow exhalations while my cat found a cradle in my arms. He asked about my ex-lover. What did he do that was so bad? I’ll take his knees out for you, he offered.

Sometimes, when I couldn’t sleep, I imagined leaving the cave, finding my way through darkened streets to his bar. I would wear a clingy red dress that cinched my waist and showed off my legs. I would know him by the sprig of baby's breath pinned to his collar, and we would share a cocktail the colour of a star and then begin to entangle our lives together like threads of wind-whipped hair. Much later, we would fight about him leaving the cap off the toothpaste, and he would hate my habit of hiding balled-up tissues in the nooks of our furniture. We would disagree about a coupe or sedan, and our love would collapse and disintegrate as all things that burn too bright.

One night, he asked me if we should meet. A tremor shot through my stony abode, and I dangled on the precipice of his question.