She Clung to Him

She clung to him, though he too was without form. Amorphous and malleable, they'd been opened, and now offered each other to each other, in knowledge and in confidence.

"It's all about me," he said, sagely.

"Yes," she replied. "That's the good news."

"I feel so defined."

"I live my life… half-way,” she confessed.

"That's wonderful," he said.

A pause.

"I was wondering about that."

Eventually.

"I'm going to say 'yes' to what I want."

"Like Yoko," he said.

"Hmmm?"

"Yoko. John Lennon. You know."

"Oh."

"She wrote 'yes' on a small piece of paper, or something, and put it on a ceiling in this gallery. Then hung a magnifying glass next to it and left a step ladder there. It's how they met," he said, tracing the word lightly on her bare shoulder. "If she had written the word 'no', or something else, I guess John never would have fallen in love with her, and maybe wouldn't have been shot."

Later.

"That was good of her."

"What?"

"Leaving the step ladder."

"Oh... Yes."

They.

Folded into each other and though they were no less anonymous, no more tangible…

"Can I surrender yet?" she asked.

"Yes, I don't want to speak anymore. I already know you."

---

Across the street, equally defined, her husband left the flowers beneath the glow of a street-lamp and the moon. It was summer. He would teeter into fall, and mail her a birthday card on the coldest day of winter.

Sometime later, a conference of birds watched as Kwan Yin's head was removed from her body and cast into the ferns beneath a Japanese maple.

"There is no repairing that," one spoke to the collective in that arcane language of birds. "They may be able to reattach it, but it will never be fixed."

"Yes," affirmed the collective. “There will always be a scar, even after it fades.”

Being birds, they clearly didn't understand the complexity of the situation.