Post-collapse post-push starlight sweat murmurings. Charlize Theron hair sprouts. Sprouts? she said. Hush, he said. I'm poeticizing. Yeah, but: sprouts? Do you think you're making love to a broccoli woman? Am I making love to a broccoli woman? I will bury you, she mock threatened, hovering the index finger above the nose. He took a quiet bite out of the air in reply. A summer porch, a summer couch, and a cascading set of woods quietly whistling their way through the screen porch mesh, and there was a hand, a single hand — hers? — that arched above the top folds of the couch like a flower leaning its way out of a vase.
He, spotting her in the once upon an existential starter's pistol of a when, thought she wore earrings he was surprised to see on a subway at eight in the morning — mighty dangling chandelier bits. She, spotting him, thought she noticed a slight tick of a habit where he walked like a robot built in the 80's hearing music for the first time. Her boots clicked deeply, with a sound that lingered long after the fact, like a horse making its way through Central Park in the middle of the winter. He, making a co-worker laugh on the way to work (“I told you about the time I put together an actual ticker-tape parade of thanks for someone who had agreed to apartment sit for me once, right?” “With signs and everything?” “Yeah. The big one was, ‘A GRATEFUL NATION HONORS ITS HEROES'”), the CTA windows momentarily revealing the river that had been dyed green once again that year, made her laugh, too, and they: goodbye, city. Goodbye, Illinoise. I do not feel thee. Hello, country. Hello, the one obligatory Murnau viewing. The dogs they had had relaxed, amazingly so, one running through the fields and the other joining them in being almost asleep on the porch. Neither shook. It took him weeks to get over that.
An hour or so earlier: hey. Hey. I always meant to ask: what's your language for pa**ion? Sorry? She took one step towards him. What's your language for pa**ion? Reading recipes for prawn salad out loud over the church microphone during Bingo night. Come on, she said, taking a second step. What's your language for pa**ion? Taking excerpts from The City of Devi, Infrared, Ed King, Kissing England, and others and asking certain someones to recreate certain award-winning scenes from the book? She was within tie-grabbing distance. She softly grabbed his tie. But what's your language for pa**ion? His voice dropped an octave: I … — and his head bobbled in search of the words — want it to be softly giddy and timelessly kind, moonlight-spilling like a clumsy cup about to bounce itself out of someone's hand and why-there's-gold-in-the-sand foot-shuddering because of — well — and she thought of how they met in that city and found themselves talking about how the world is as open as opened up wine and how more people should turn dinner plates into UFO's and send them floating across, up, and over some of the things that had been carved into the wood of a table, a solid oak table, lines like, “Dear Idiot: brain to brain is holy brainer's kiss.” “Yes. Agreed. But, also —” though this bit is blurred out, necessarily so, because of course it is.