Walls

And she looked across the desk,
at his hands, moving the pen
in strange lines she could not
translate. 
His head was down, reading,
his hands moving; always.


To reach out and to silence
the noise from those hands,
to make them content.
It was all she ever wanted.


Across the desk she was safe,
a grey formica sea making
boundaries of the safety type.
This desk was the caution tape
to her crime scene.


Because from across these
boundaries, oh the state lines
impenetrable- oh, the Berlin Wall
insurmountable- from this distance
she could watch
with steady gaze, subtle
because he could not see her.
He was engrossed in words,
and she was engrossed with
the moving tics
of his hands.


There was a rhythm needing
to be quieted. To be fulfilled.
She deduced this much in her
mind from across the mountain range
between them.


It kept her hands
from wandering over across the
socially constructed white paper
to his hands,
to grab them and make them be still.


She was stifled in the silences,
which stretched long and slow
like dirty rivers. Chock full of 
weird unknown nouns he was 
trying to conjure up. 
Full of toxic waste the two 
created in this caustic sense
of closeness with
the impenetrable distance
of this goddamned 
fucking table.


He read and it was agonizing,
the movement of his hands.
The soft formation of
dead words on his lips.
The motion so softened
by pink mouthy flesh
it came out not as words
but as shocking silence
that clouded the air
above his bent head.


In her stifled state
on the other side,
in the plastic chairs
she hated and stuck to in the
muggy heat, 
she made herself a perfect
statue. Still in a way inhuman,
only found in stiff royal paintings-
the kind with starched white collars.


For moving made noises
and broke the disgustingly sacred
space of nothing, 
the zero decibel hum
of their two minds 
on opposite sides
of a muddy river.


His stupid hands
would not cease their
confounded motions,
flicking a pen and navigating
broken words,
and making maps of
almost-cities 
as his fingers grasped and
squeezed and moved the air.


What the hell,
she wanted to ask,
why do you move so much,
and what on earth are you thinking?


But luckily enough, her mouth 
was shut and her hands folded
because of the brick wall that was
this desk.


And in these moments
there was a weird loss of time,
the clock in this room always
wrong in hours and minutes,
and time being something fake
and forged anyways-


but nevertheless, a long
space grew here and was cultivated
by fingers movement and small quiet
puffs of respiration.


And it was enough that she
imagined Reagan in her mind
as he said "Mr. Gorbachev,
tear down this wall!"
And in a flying leap
of bravery and 
rash foolishness 
she cleared the wall
(world-champion pole-vaulter, 
as she was not)
and reached 
across what was all of space
and time and humanity
and nothingness.


And she silenced his
perpetual motion.
Her hand 
fell soft and nervous
on his, and she looked 
and parted her mouth as to 
speak- but the look she received
from this hiatus of movement
and the breaking down of walls
(or crossing of rivers)
was enough.


Neither spoke,
but both crossed
the rubble of the broken
wall. 


[A very quick, short work of fiction/prose for you, lovelies. This is fake, mind you... hence fiction.]