495. Falling

"You don't have to talk about it," said Em. Trev stood facing the cosmos, his back, bare, tight, sand duney in light and shadow to the caravan of her pouty lips. "I'm not asking. So you know."

Trev looked down as her hands traced the outline of his shoulders. "It's not that."

Em traced kisses across the sky of his horizon. Her arms reached around his chest and pulled his back to her cheek. "It's the past," she said.

"I'm not sure what that means. The feeling is now. The memories are now."

"And so am I," she said. He tensed. His muscle feeling more like marble than flesh, suddenly cold, not warm. She regretted.

"Okay."

"Hold me." He did. "Tighter."

"I don't want to hurt you."

"Hurt comes from withholding. I want to hold all of you, the pain as well as the pleasure. I want to know you can let me there, allow me to sit, with you, in that place. And in that place, that place that Kyra talks about, in that warmth, in that openness, is healing, joining, a place where your beginning and my ending glide as waves."

Trev laughed. "How long you been saving that up?"

"Oh, about a year, maybe more."

"Really? A year?"

"Yep. Remember that first karaoke night?"

"Sure."

"Well, I had some thoughts."

"I see."

"So?"

"So what?"

"You lettin' me in?"

"I'm not sure how to put it into words. The feeling is like a living thing, moving, changing, never exactly the same from one moment to the next. Trying to describe it is like trying to grasp a handful of water."

"Find a corner and show me that. Not the whole thing, just a little corner."

Trev sighed. "Okay. The feeling sits in your gut. It feels heavy, without being solid. It feels warm, but not in a cozy way, warm in a wet your pants kinda way, but the feeling is not temporal, not like something that is going to happen and then be over. Imagine wetting your pants in public but the wetting doesn't stop." Trev paused.

"Don't stop," she said.

He started laughing.

"I didn't mean it like that," she said.

"So you want me to urinate on you."

"Nooooo. You know what I meant."

"I'm just teasing you. I just don't feel like I'm doing a very good job."

"Just focus on that corner. Think of it like a tent. Lift the corner and let me get my foot underneath."

"Okay. The feeling, and I can't think of a better way to put it, is like a sinking feeling, like your stomach is an elevator, in free fall. And you can't stop it. And the mercy of a bottom, an ending, is denied you. The odd thing is, your head is not falling, but everything else is, almost like some horrible magic trick gone wrong where your head is visible to the audience, but everything else is really gone. And you are the only one that knows it. Imagine that. People come by and talk to your head, as if nothing is wrong and if you try and tell them, they look at you like you are crazy. And then . . ."

"And then what?"

"They leave. And the night comes. And you are still falling. And you feel smaller and smaller and smaller all the while the pain grows bigger and bigger and bigger and you have this odd house of horrors sensation of a feeling that won't fit your body and then there is that sick sensation again. I don't know how to explain it. A sense of losing control. And there is nothing you can do. And so you wait. Wait to hit bottom. And there is no bottom. Just a falling. Like a dead animal voiding its bladder, only you are still alive."