The body at the bottom

I took the stairs two at a time to the body at the bottom.

Her hair was alive under my hands as I brushed it away and looked into her eyes. Something of their light seemed to linger around the edges, hinting at the heartbreak that had burned there. I remembered damp lashes clinging together in fear, begging desperate questions of me. How I had known, then, that my heart had hardened against reply. It gave way now, ran with a red trickle around her temple towards the arc of her ear, escaping my absent ministrations.

Three steps up lay an empty shoe. It burned my fingers as I read the ripples in its sole, scanning stops and pebbles from its frequent journeys. Tracing the heeled curve, letting its pitted edges teach my fingers, I read the message it had left me. The twin had cut deeply into the soft underbelly of the floor, three steps down, five seconds ahead. It held no sign of remorse for its insane departure, violating the deepest bonds of right and left. No stockinged foot had abandoned it; the separation was justified.

Under my nails I noticed some of the living hair that had crept along with me, unnoticed, flashing its coy smiles in my direction. Unable to resist such promise, I rejoined its sisters in the carpet and we spoke to each other in lover’s whispers. One laughed of a tickling brush against her cheek, another of a windblown sting to her eye. Several spoke of how they had intertwined with impassioned fingers and felt the exquisite pain of their pull. For days we whispered back and forth, until I swam with their secrets.

Alive then with this golden glow, I stepped carefully over shapely leg, past immodestly hiked skirts. Delicate fingers beckoned to me to return, but I knew them well, knew how they had lain curled around neck and shoulders, grasping flesh as if possessed. Having finally gained that sweetest of silences, feeling the lick of it coil expectantly through me, I raised myself up, up, and flung shut the door.