A basic time line for basic space.  Basic shapes dividing eye data energy in ways we think we should, she thinks she could understand.

                The question, loud looming cloud as it was, remained in which set of angles she might extend the line out from her chest.  And of course, there was still thread to be chosen: thinnest gold and silver, hopeful like shards of glass; or thick buttery ribbon in some luxuriously deep jewel tone.  The trend of centuries: hiding fears in the most plush, velvet with its brushed texture so easy to get lost in.  Or maybe some flowered lace of frayed paisley.  So slight.  Slight all, in a reflection (that would not suit her) of all that playing and paying that she didn’t know how not to do.

                Not to do, things were bought to do.  Covering the brain in the dripping thick dark chocolate of distraction as, pinching the line between manicured index finger and thumb, she pulled the line closer, its used tail crumpling into abandoned wrinkles between bare callused feet.

                There is a sense of standing on some floating disk, a water lily in air, but the color of dirt brown. Or no, now the warm tan of wood floors, now alcohol-stained tile sticky with absorbed celebration and shed dignity, or now finally the pale blue stripe of his bed sheets.  The girl or the string was pulling, this axiom indiscernible with no concrete background against which a careless  observer might draw conclusions of motion, stillness or inertia.

                Motion sickness came like a bolt, shocking from the still, the moment of pause.  Every inch of skin, vein and muscle soaked in the swirl of so many colors around her lily leaf.  Cars spinning and dancing, a metal creaking ballet of the big city she ran to.  Trains and buses circling, unconcerned with gravity in the sideways gire, pausing at the curved sides so with a turned head she might see herself there inside.  Travelling to him or to there.  What was she wearing?  Forgotten earrings, and that dress looked much shorter outside of a mirror.  What a tourist with drooping hair.  Didn’t they have plans?  You’d think she’d want to look nicer.

                There will always, have always, have have and have again, been quietnesses.  Spells of the computer screen, a phone call from home, that panic of pocket wallet zeros or the worst conglomerate of all these, outside eyes looking in.  Spells that, with sparkling accuracy and an eerie auditory crack, stop the spinning world around her, or slow it down to look upon itself, unable to flinch, in all its drunken chaos.  Scarves and stone steps  and dripping glasses of wine freeze amid the juggler’s grace.  A ringing phone echoing, guitars scratched with wear, a shared pillow on the weekend.  All hanging above, around and below, like some madman’s mobile (or, o god, could he be a poet?).

                And she can’t look at it all, she can’t, not at once she can’t, so she will look down at the string between her fingers.  Ordinarily it is caught there so gingerly, some slightly unappetizing thing, touched with the least digital surface area possible, avoiding the transfer of whatever frightening and abhorrent and malodorous qualities it may possess.

                But she must look down and see her hands, stripped apparently of their agency, pulling it shorter bit by bit, abandoning it on the chameleon ground beneath her feet.  She will tug’o’war and waver, and change angle after angle.  But somewhere, that frayed snipped end is getting closer.