Nothing was felt.

Our bodies do not discern a distinct direction. Motions have not been memorized, souls are not in sync with a physical presence. It can be sensed that we do not know each other, the way we need to. Flesh rubs at each’s other like a scratching against a doormat. But what rests on top cannot feel what lies below. Motion can only be heard: the scratching sounds, a sigh in meager dosages. I apply pressure against the doormat, but the owner does not care to let me in. I remain a part of the exterior—grinding, until I dissolve. My hands pass over the fabric of flesh, but I feel nothing. Fingers fall around curving sides, as my hands twist and clutch this mass I am situated upon. I am grabbing—holding on to a changing life, in hope I will keep it from passing out beneath me—there is someone here, but I, I feel nothing. Slide out of my human container like the slippage of sand through the hours of time, I imagine, he is made for no one. Colors come in and out of existence, but my cheeks remain as roses—my eyes as petals, falling open. We turn, so the bareness of my back is hidden by sheets soaked by memories I will never know, nor ask to hear. His gleams like a canal’s coat, tossing off the moon’s face as it falls through the sky. I hear my thoughts say, Appearance is artificial. I know truth speaks when one wishes for fantasies. I cannot fight myself, and so, I believe my thoughts. Letting my eyes cast off into the corner of his room, I hope my mind follows after, even if the counter reaction is it’s a pestering pet. But sight sinks into deeper darkness—a place in time the mind is never taught to conceive—where absence matters most. He pushes his self through me, but the only thing I feel is the engagement’s effect rising words towards my throat. I swallow a third time so they sink into the rest of my waste. We turn again and I am up in the air. But looking back where I was I see my impression imprinted on his sheet like a former self that seeps beneath the surface—reminding me, I will remain, perhaps as a substance, as a body, as a scent that starts to smell old fashion, as a face that spoke over my soul. I fall into him, I feel nothing. I fall into him further, I feel more of nothing. And then something: his name, his name resonating outside my mind and being pushed out by my lips. I hear it being said over and over, but cannot remember having said it. 

Falling on my back, I am unconscious of my self. “I read you recently and it was all romance,” he reveals. I can only write on love when I am out of love. I hear his lashes beating like birds flapping for freedom. “What happens when you are in it?” Nothing. “But what do you feel?” I feel nothing. Silence sounds outside my ear like a fly I want to crush until its blood leaves me with a stain of life. Instead, I lay, because at night one does in hope of turning their back to aloneness. Blackness smothers sight, and I hear him preserving air, trying to resist entrance into what his mind does not know. I keep calm, letting it cover me like an embrace you love for. He struggles, as I think how similar we are. We both know nothing. In the morning, when color takes control and burns a hole through the night’s cloth, he will ask me what romance I will write next. I will tell him this. But this was nothing. If he is in sight, he will see I am avoiding the true telling of truth. If he is intuitive, I will promise him I will write. But I will not tell him how. See, I will have to write within imagination, for I expected more of something other, but I felt nothing.