Day 7: Fingers

On the surface of her surname that lingered in the air, I drew a sky blue balloon to reflect the clouds painted on her ceiling and watched it float through her roof, up away from the fooled sheets that would remain well kept for as long as I was to be acquainted with them. I watched the imaginary latex balloon dance on currents of air and kiss the tip top of the atmosphere before it popped out of my mind, drawn back by a long string of imploding intangible thoughts, I sat up. Back from the bathroom, her feet silently glided across the floor, words graced her lips and the world of mine smiled back. Response unnecessary I brushed the pad of my thumb across the high of her cheek bone, foreheads clicked together tightly, noses nearly touched. For a brief moment, our souls connected; then we set to work.
We gathered up all that lay on the floor: a large woven rug purchased by the both of us at an indian trading post; several textbooks, some on the subject of anatomy, others on the subject of human interaction, and a single one on the creation of reality in visual art; several plastic cups worth of discarded pencils and chewed up pens; one quarter. She got towels from the bathroom and the buckets which I filled and carried back to her room. We stood there, the air excited with what we were about to do. She began to undress and I tightly packed the towels into the cracks of the doorways and her closet, securing her family and her shoes. We poured the liquid contents of the buckets out onto the floor and watched as, slowly the surface that we stood on became a reflective pool of indecision. Were we inside or outside amongst the clouds that painted the sky above and below us; did we float inside our reckless time capsule that lasted as long as we liked because of what we did or because determinism had demanded it; we knew the answers but we zipped them up between our lips and clamped down the padlocks.
I dipped my fingers in the balloon blue paint and I touched her all over, starting at the thin skin of her eye lids and as my hands grew more accustomed to the acrylic, I began to work more fervently. Working the plastic liquid in my hands into the crease where her arm intersects her torso, down the smooth serpentine shape that her ribcage shouts as it compliments her hips every day. Oh how I wished that the words would come that would let me express to her in language what I only knew in touch. The important parts, her spinal column, the furiously firm tonality of her thigh muscle, the spaces between her toes, the back side of her knees, her belly button, the soft, true fold that her skin makes underneath her breasts, collar bone. She was the balloon this time, suspended in the sky, this time I determined not to let her float away.