When Passion Fades

What happened just now? he asked sharply, after she had slithered past him in the doorway, as if in disgust straining not to touch him, as though their battery poles did not match, or like the way people move down in the metro, crossing the platform swiftly and surely, guided by a clear inner map of their surroundings, zigzagging past strangers to reach their destination.

Now he had become one of those for her, he felt, as she moved on towards the bedroom. For they had always at least laid a hand across a waist, a pat along the neck, or shared a quick kiss at every sudden encounter, ever since half a year earlier that summer when they had closed themselves around each other with unrefined perfection, entered each other’s orbits, forced to reckon with the other in every new step since she and he were also represented in he and she.

That pull, as natural as the planetary or as a chemical mixture unique to them, he had never doubted, but now she had slithered past him with her face turned away and stiff, as though his presence suffocated her, but she could not put it into words, could not say that perhaps it would be best if he left since she needed to be alone for a while to regain her balance, the implication being that his presence did not allow for this.

Instead she expressed her unease by refusing to touch him of her own accord, by making him feel like an odd stranger who had appeared at the edge of the living room, a colliding energy that had to be repelled.

What do you mean? she asked with surprising sincerity. It’s nothing, isn’t it? Or? I don’t know, he said, and then said no more.