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jane
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The Show
The crowd gathers round, and bustles about to find their seats. The show is about to begin. Cranberry-colored velvet curtains pull aside, as if excusing themselves by magic, and there an empty stage.
Darkness.
And then the crowd, the chorus, sees the players. The couple. The spotlight, center stage. They stand facing each other, looking directly at the other as if into a mirror. Gender blurred, but matched all the same. Their naked skin is white from the solar spot blinding in the heavens of the rafters.
She blinks, and then he takes a step forward. She closes her eyes. The crowd sits silent, unknowing. What have we come here to see? Can we even remember?
He kisses her. They remain centered in the white beam, surrounded by particles kicked up by heedless stagehands. Their eyes stay closed and his arm reaches up to her shoulder. It sweeps itself down her arm like water over a rock. When it reaches her hand, their fingers catch each other. The other arms wrap around opposite torsos. They kneel.
The crowd watches, knowing they don’t really exist. Some mothers get up and leave. The young ones stay to watch. The virgins blush, and the loose women smile with familiarity. There is no sound.
The two in the limelight are barely discernable as two. Their white bodies now form a mass on dusty stage, with heavy breaths and sweaty palms embrace. Their affinity conjoins and breaks, reconnecting and folding over itself, toes curled and fingers stretched. Her hair is tangled with shoestuffs left from previous performances.
He heaves a sigh, his last expanding and rising; she’s become four limbs wrapped around him before she stretches out beneath him. They pant and whisper and breathe, and the curtain bows before them, velvet brick wall to hinder peeking eyes. The crowd departs without a word.
Behind the veil, the two are standing up. He tries to kiss her with closed eyes. He catches her cheek and then her shoulder blade as she turns away. With watching eyes withdrawn, she finds no reason.
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