a knot and a knot and a knot

Lonnie is the shatterer. Jill is the brat of the ball. They're moving deeply under slippery light, something like dancers caught in an arachnid's web.

What's going through both their minds: Who stole the money? Who lifted the arm and jabbed a gun to a teller's temple? Who cleaned up after, like rushing to pour salt on wine birthmarking an area rug.

The handcuffs went on almost as an afterthought.

Their real story now is the intervening years, the isolation imagined or real but felt the same either way. Thick stacks of paper inked blue that were all thought and no action, punctuated by brain and heart, but no hair or muscle or skin to fill the spaces in between.

Basically, all they said in those years was sorry; sorry wrenched a million ways.

Sometimes things end in a rat's nest, a knot and a knot and a knot wound so tight as to be fit to live in, comfortable as a kingdom.

They're there, a place all their own. Still moving in that way that's like a pause. Strings pull from each other in crescendo and the effect is canyon-like. They're screaming their heads off, crazy with it, but it's too far away to seem real.