Alone with You in the Ether

by Olivie Blake

(The first time she’d used his name, she’d been pretending at unfamiliarity. That time, though, he could hear the way it had previously crossed her mind.)

She seemed to appreciate things she could see. He thought of her gaze traveling over the scars on his shoulders, taking him in. Yes, he would draw it for her, and then she would see it. She would watch it take shape and he would know he’d said it in a way she could understand, and then she would know that even this, with its ordinary features, was wonder and glory, too. He didn’t blame her for not seeing it. He blamed everyone else for letting her forget.

What time is this? and it doesn’t mean six o’clock, it doesn’t mean evening, it doesn’t even mean dinnertime, it just means, Where are we in the cosmos, because I have lived this so many times in fantasy that it has become six different forms of reality and now, tell me, which reality are we?

“So when people say we’re alone in the ether…?” “Alone in everything. In time and space, in existence, in religion.”