Don’t leave me, she said, this wasn’t easy, she said, and the end justifies the means. Sometimes it’s necessary to bend things in your direction in order to make sure you’ll get something done, and it doesn’t matter how, if it’s done, and it’s done. This isn’t the worst way to wake up, wondering where your hands are, wondering how your arm got so far above your head, when there is only the sound of the pebbles falling by your ear to remind you of the passage of time, to remind you where you are. The things that were disassembled the night before are still pretending to be held together, so your morning will not go as badly as you think. There is a gentleness to this, despite the ashes that still lie at your feet, telling a different story.
Don’t fight me, she said, you’ll never do right by me, she said, and this was only one way of getting you from there to here. When you’ve seen the one you’re looking for circling the globe over and over and over, you have to stand in the way, and use all the charms at your disposal to make them wake up and notice you. Don’t blame me for finding the five things that you happened to find charming and using them against you, because at the end of this you’ll see that it was always in your direction.
Don’t startle me, she said, you’ll only unravel me, she said, and that won’t work out for any of us, because I am exactly like you, I come to pull myself back together without any effort, but if I find someone to blame on the way, it will be a long night in the desert. My seventeen faces were made for dancing and not for understanding, and if I catch you staring at the ripples and trying to find patterns that speak to you, the places where they match the lines on your fingers, I won’t hesitate to push you into the water. You think you see hidden things when you look too close, but all you’re seeing is the blueprint for allowing you to see at a distance, and you have none of that tonight.