Gravity Eyelids Session

I have been running dry in the writing department lately (blame Cooper, that's HIS department), so I decided to take some inspiration from my favorite thing in the world, music. I took a song I had been listening to (ok listening isn't strong enough a word to describe what I have been doing to this song, I have been absorbing it) and I broke it down verse by verse and used each verse to key a paragraph. I wrote this after I had listened to this song a few times late the other night. And so, a short story came out of it, and it was as spontaneous as it was fun. I didn't know what I was writing until I looked at the next verse, and it definitely flavored the story. It may sound like shyte to you. But I think it's beautiful, and I hope that this story will convey beauty too. And, please, don't judge. I rarely write anything other than absurd comedy, and this all came out in a spontaneous string at 2am. If you want, listen to the song while you read this. It may help set the mood. Then again, it may not.

Gravity Eyelids - Porcupine Tree

She stood by the bus stop, a creature out of place. An ephemeral spirit passing thru the lives of mortal beings, with all their grime and sadness, untouched by it all. She stared at a point no one else could see, even though they dared not look for fear of attracting her attention. So intense were her eyes [open your eyes love]

that no one could look directly at her. It was as if she wasn't there, completing the illusion that she was just a tourist in our world. I stopped doing whatever mundane task I was absorbed in and cocked my head slightly, hearing a sound I had never heard before, and would never hear again [hear me out before I lose my mind]

I would call it singing, but that word is too worn for what I perceived. I forgot about my schedule, my cell phone, my boss asking an inane question from that phone I casually lowered to my side. I forgot about every petty thought I had floating in front of my eyes the moment before I heard that sound. She was singing, and no one around me seemed to notice; or they just tried to bury themselves in the bleakness around them. I stared, I listened, and I waited to hear the end of it. [I've been waiting for hours]

But it didn't stop. I realized that this was her normal state. She wasn't performing for me, she was just existing. Something snapped inside me. My face relaxed, all the tension flowing down to my feet, and holding there; holding my feet in place. I desperately wanted to move those feet and go to her, like an incidental siren. They would not move, and my frustration came out of my eyes, tears [let the salt flow, feel my coil unwind]

running down. I stood transfixed, both pleased to not be disrupting her and angry that I could not disrupt her. And then she blinked, and stopped her song, and two things happened simultaneously. My feet stumbled out of the roots that had held them in place, and she turned to me. All the sounds of the real world came crashing in on me, with the silence her song left hungering for something to end it. I had thought she had a smile on her face before, but then she looked at me and turned up one corner of her mouth [give me a smile please]

and showed me something real. Something so real that I doubted every other emotion anyone had tried to convey to me the same way. All the tension left me, my feet no longer leaded with doubt. And when her eyes looked into mine, all the outside world fell aside as if invisible hands pushed it aside. I did not hear, I did not see. Only her smile and unblinking eyes did I see; only the slowing rhythm of my heart did I hear [count the calm and watch me breathing slow]

Then she did an inexplicable thing. She pointed her toes at me with one foot, set it down, and moved closer to me. My slowing heart suddenly lurched into a different gear, beating wildly at the thought of her impending proximity. It raged and screamed, trying to jump out of me. And just when it seemed to border on pain, when my vision narrowed, she reached me and placed one hand on that spot where it would have left me, as if she was physically keeping it in. [winding me up tease]

And she did. My heart stopped its riot, content with her touch. She had a look on her face as if she understood her role as both the problem and the cure. I forgot all about decorum, forgot about thinking. My primal instinct took over, a form of fight or flight. I quickly grabbed her arm, afraid she might flinch from my touch, but more afraid she would leave suddenly if I did nothing. I couldn't be sure she wasn't making me do this [get inside my head and make it show]

I knew later that it was me. Some deep part of me knew what the outcome would be. We held that pose forever. As we went on and really got to know each other, realizing we already did, she never took her hand off my heart. And I never let go of her arm; never stopped letting her know that I wanted her to stay, to keep her hand there. I knew if she took it away, my heart would finish its escape and leave. The tension never returned. The roots never grasped my feet again. My heart never betrayed me again. My eyes trusted her enough to collapse the light into earth, sleeping better because the dream is real now. [gravity eyelids come down]