chester 1

9-7-22

They stared that the sea, watching the waves recede into inky blackness. or rather, she did, and he joined her briefly.

“I was really mean to you yesterday, wasn’t I?” he said, speaking first in a break with tradition. The silence spread between them. It was hard to tell, but she could hear how his throat restricted with self-sustaining guilt, a circular kind that is so often inescapable.

“I mean, yeah,” she replied. “It sucked, what else do you want me to say? But I’ll be fine.” She refused to absolve him. His resulting silence spoke volumes. He hoped she appreciated that he bit his tongue, restraining himself from snapping at her again. Just as she had always hoped he appreciated the benefit of the the doubt she often tried to extend to him, when he was sullen, uncommunicative, and difficult to understand. But both of these burdens were unspoken and were unlikely to be recognized, but both hoped a silent symetrical understanding would ensue.

She, resurrecting tradition, broke the silence this time.

“Look, it’ll all wash away eventually. In the waves of all the good stuff, or even just the waves of time. There’s been way worse and there’ll be way worse.”

His eyes glistened in the solitary glow of the moon. Clearly, she saw the fear reflected in them. Those eyes recalled the ghost of many a guilty expression that passed over the face of a man. It seemed that man’s greatest fear was nothing outside himself but simply the fear of being “bad.” Perhaps a legitamate fear in the face of the asymmetrical power he waged on the world.