compendium

love is a parallax

love is a parallax
then jet the blue tent topple, stars rain down, / and god or void appall us till we drown

William and I once almost got killed.

This was before everything went to shit. We were at a bank because William needed to get money for the movie we were going to and obviously you just have to go to the bank for that, and when we were standing up at the counter the door swung open and three warning shots went right over everyone's heads.

William didn't even hesitate. He grabbed my shoulders and pulled me down. We went sprawling across the floor, half of his chest pressed against me.

"The hell?" I hissed.

William shushed me, his fingers clenched in the hood of my coat. The two of us looked sideways, up.

The bank robbers were intimidating, but not really because of the guns. It was because of the masks. You couldn't see their face. Not being able to see something makes it all the more terrifying.

The only civilians in the bank were William, me, and an old couple who took a long time getting on the ground, long enough that they were shoved. Both William and I flinched when the sound of brittle bone hitting the marble floors ricocheted around the place.

The bank robbers, as most bank robbers do, got their money, but by then someone had hit the silent alarm and the police were lined up outside. So, as most bank robbers do, they went to take a hostage. And they went for the smallest, seemingly (and probably accurately) weakest person, which, lo and behold, was yours truly.

One of the bank robbers grabbed my arm and pulled me up, and William shot up, too. Another one slammed the bottom of his gun into William's jaw and he went snapping back. The bank robber kept the gun pointed at him, but he didn't get up again.

The funny thing about what happened next was that when the bank robber pointed his gun at me, I wasn't afraid.

He wasn't going to shoot me. He was a criminal, but he was still a person, and he knew that armed robbery had a shorter sentence than murder, and nobody was nice to child murderers even in prison.

He wasn't going to shoot me.

He actually didn't. When he brought me outside he forgot to consider the drastic height difference between us, and the police had a great shot at him even before I scrunched down. I can't explain it, though. The spray of blood that painted strands of my hair, the sound of the gunshot, grating and strident in my ears. The way he fell so easily, as if he was made of nothing, his lifeless fingers snagging in my coat like a lifeline.

And then when William came running out and practically threw himself on me and I started laughing for no reason at all, and he was heavier than me so we stumbled back until I hit a cop car and accidentally started the alarm and then we both kept laughing for lots of reasons and none at all.

Friends don't normally almost get shot in a bank robbery, but this was what it was to have friends.

Friends don't normally steal the sky together, but we did, William and I.

I almost ruined it. I was so suddenly upset, a bought of hey-this-is-hopeless brought on by the deadening of the night. I just got up and walked over to where it was propped up, kicking stones and breathing hard. I stood in front of it, staring at it, scrutinizing it, picking it apart, and I yanked down my oxygen mask and breathed for as long as I dared, just to get a taste of what was fake-real before I destroyed the only thing that was real-real.

William had been real-real, but that was just it; William was a had been now.

I pulled up my mask and scooped up the largest rock and almost threw it - my arm was wound back, for God's sake. I was so ready to just throw it, to destroy every part of that stolen night sky.

And I couldn't. Because the hands that brought it into creation were six feet underground and died penniless and unappreciated, like William, like me, because there would never be another one, because it was so precious and it was in my grasp and it was William and me, me and William.

I didn't destroy it. I never wanted to.