Alone with You in the Ether

by Olivie Blake

Tell your mind to be kind to you today.

Because everything is always the same until, very suddenly, it isn’t.

That I could study you for a lifetime, carrying all of your peculiarities and discretions in the webs of my spidery palms, and still feel empty-handed.

There was nothing worse than being predictable. Nothing smaller than feeling ordinary. Nothing more disappointing than being reminded she was both.

Art, a voice buzzed in her ear, was creation. It was dissecting a piece of herself and leaving it out for consumption, for speculation. For the possibility of misinterpretation and the inevitability of judgment.

Am I the girl who stays while others leave?

She did that, loved him invasively, exploring him like the depths of the sea.