Me and Her

Me and Her sat up for hours one night watching the sky, watching it move—well, not really move because we were the ones moving but it looked as though it were moving because we were sat in the same place all through the night, or for as long as we sat there, which was hours. Did I say that already? I’m losing track.

Of time, I mean. It’s not linear, but curved, I think. If you asked a child to draw a straight line without a ruler that’s what time looks like, wobbles and ripples and lead shavings flying off where we can’t see them—well, it wouldn’t be lead, you know, that’s far too dangerous because it could poison the children. What I mean is the graphite that’s in those HB black and yellow bee-coloured pencils all children use. And that line’s the same line we looked up at that night. That great gash in the sky which bled out stars and cosmic dust which found a home between our lust.

We sat there for hours (sorry, I said that, didn’t I?) and tried to make shapes with the specks, tried to find the constellations, the Seven Sisters and Orion’s belt, that Plough thing which got dragged across the sky before us, blasting out waves of radiation which can last much longer than the amount of time which we sat there for. Which was hours. This sash, that girdle of the sky meanders about Me and Her like some kind of nebulous thread coming loose leaving a seam seemingly open, seeming cinched apart.