Saturday, April 14, 2012

Call and Response: Viewpoints in 100 Words (#1)

When she was asleep, he would stare at the soft spot just above her left clavicle and watch the pulse. Now and then he would touch the soft skin there and let his forefinger rise and fall with her skin. One night she sat up and turned toward him, but he lay there motionless. "You must have had a bad dream," he said the next morning when she told him she'd looked down at him and for a moment he was someone else. "Someone else?" he asked. "What does that mean?" He could not say anything for hours after that.

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The apartment had been his before it became theirs, and even after six months she still was not used to the sounds. She was not sure why she woke up that night. There was something there--not quite a dream, not quite a memory. She'd looked at him, how the alarm clock's glow made him appear different. When she told him about it the next morning, she found something else she was not used to: silence. She had always told him everything she felt and thought, but this time she knew that, somehow, she would have to be more careful.

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