They had said everything to one another that could be said, that was hearable. Everything left was too damaging, too stark, too much. So, she got the sewing basket from the closet and they pushed back the coffee table and sat, cross-legged, facing one another in the middle of the den. Opening the basket, she pulled one of the larger needles, one with a large enough eye for the sturdy brown thread on the spool that she selected from among the others at the bottom of the basket. She threaded the needle and, after kissing him one last time, she raised the needle to the corner of his upper lip and, as he closed his eyes in a wince, she forced the point through his flesh, a small drop of blood welling up, and pulled the thread through. She looped around his lip and through again and tied off to hold the end in place. Then she pulled the thread over his bottom lip and stitched outside in through that, back out again through his mouth opening and up to his upper lip again. After the third stitch, the second in the top, she pulled firmly and closed that corner of his mouth snugly, and then continued in, back out, in, back out, tug, along the thinning opening of his mouth, until, finished, she tied off the other end. She wiped the little drops of blood from the stitching and, with a smile that he returned as well as he could, she handed the needle to him and leaned forward.
Meanwhile, across town, they always have something new to talk about. Music plays and they laugh and talk and talk all evening. Sometimes they have wine, sometimes cocktails, sometimes just coffee or tea. Sometimes they make love once in the early evening and again just before they go to sleep, sometimes only one time or the other, but not both, and sometimes not at all. They cook together. They clean up together. They cannot keep their eyes open long enough to finish all the stories they want to tell one another. Sometimes, when he is talking, she cannot resist and she leaps into the middle of his story and kisses him in the middle of his sentence, his favorite place to be kissed. They have no secret that they know of. This is just the way they are. They are people with an infinity of things to say and a finite time to say it, trying to get it all told before they disappear forever in an orgasmic explosion of cosmic joy and love.
Maybe it would be better to just go ahead and say those things you think you cannot, should not say. Maybe it would be better than this silence. Maybe it would be better than these long, empty pauses. Maybe it would be better than this crooked stitching that irritates our skin. Plus we have to eat. We didn’t think of that, I guess.
Hello, friends. I hope you have plenty to say.
Later. Love.
