tom de plume
The Technique
They discovered the technique together and it carried them through the years.
Everyone thought it was sex because sex is easy to think. But the technique
was something else and they didn’t want to be too clear about what it was, which
they thought might be part of what it was. Maybe it shimmered in a certain light, maybe it only came out on the first Wednesday of the month. Its breath could be icy-cold one day and burning coals the next. Some days she would be walking down a long corridor at work and think she heard a voice behind her, not calling her name but reading a sentence from a book, something to make her laugh. She’d turn and be surprised when it was a man coughing into a handkerchief—somewhere nearby the technique was catching a cold. Sometimes he’d be driving and she’d be in the passenger seat and the car would be doing that thing car’s do best, which is acting like a small sanctuary, an island, maybe even a confessional. But neither of them was saying a word and yet the car was full of conversation. Sometimes he wondered if it would change because everything does. Everything rises, falls, becomes opaque, dusty and forlorn. But it was rare for a day to pass when one didn’t wonder what the other was thinking. Occasionally she would wake and feel it slipping into a condition of being not itself. Then you worry. You pace and change your shirt and eat too many carrot sticks. It feels as if there is no center to hold or fly apart. Then, when one of you comes through the door and the eyes take over and hold their focus, you see right where it goes, right then, precisely where the nameless part of the soul finds its home. And the technique is alive for another while.
The Technique
They discovered the technique together and it carried them through the years.
Everyone thought it was sex because sex is easy to think. But the technique
was something else and they didn’t want to be too clear about what it was, which
they thought might be part of what it was. Maybe it shimmered in a certain light, maybe it only came out on the first Wednesday of the month. Its breath could be icy-cold one day and burning coals the next. Some days she would be walking down a long corridor at work and think she heard a voice behind her, not calling her name but reading a sentence from a book, something to make her laugh. She’d turn and be surprised when it was a man coughing into a handkerchief—somewhere nearby the technique was catching a cold. Sometimes he’d be driving and she’d be in the passenger seat and the car would be doing that thing car’s do best, which is acting like a small sanctuary, an island, maybe even a confessional. But neither of them was saying a word and yet the car was full of conversation. Sometimes he wondered if it would change because everything does. Everything rises, falls, becomes opaque, dusty and forlorn. But it was rare for a day to pass when one didn’t wonder what the other was thinking. Occasionally she would wake and feel it slipping into a condition of being not itself. Then you worry. You pace and change your shirt and eat too many carrot sticks. It feels as if there is no center to hold or fly apart. Then, when one of you comes through the door and the eyes take over and hold their focus, you see right where it goes, right then, precisely where the nameless part of the soul finds its home. And the technique is alive for another while.