Newsprint

A continuation/flip side of this piece.

The slow and steady hiss of dripping coffee wakes him, his dream already disappearing from his mind. Something about a woman on the other side of an ocean, and he was afraid; so afraid.
He feels her absence; he has become so used to the sensation that it is comforting, that he would feel lost without it. Even when she is next to him he feels it, a weight dragging him down, making him solid, making him more real. He remembers how giddy she made him feel when he first met her; as if a strong wind could lift him up and carry him down the street like the front page of a newspaper, the headline of his love written across his forehead. He never feels like that anymore. Every day the emptiness fills him. Grounds him. He puts down roots, roots that clutch and grab at everything within reach and fight the wind with insubstantial mutterings.
He remembers, too, how touching her used to make him feel, how he would press his face into her back, feeling her on his face; wanting more, somehow, some way - even if it meant destroying her to ease his own worries. But even in that he failed, too afraid of the necessary steps and consequences.
He hears the sounds of turning newspaper pages from the other room. This used to be their time, the quiet minutes before the day began when they sat and felt each other's solemn silence, let it cradle and sustain them. But things changed. The silence became strained. Forced. Awkward. He tried to fill it up but that only made it worse, made it more painful, made it more obvious that their perfect silence had been lost, that they had lost it somewhere. He raged; he begged; he pleaded. In the end it was simply another failure to add to his list. Now he lies in bed listening to her in the other room and is afraid to join her.
The scuffle of chair on tile. Coffee being poured. He can feel her approaching, feel the pull getting stronger and stronger.
"Brad?"
Silence. But not a strained one; this one is calm, like the old silence but different in some ancient way, some way he can't quite grasp. He almost cries aloud at having found it again, but is trying so hard to hang onto it that he can't waste a single bit of effort on verbalization.
"Brad, honey?"
Nononopleaseno, IamcloseIswearitIamsofuckingclose.
"Mmmmmm?"
"...coffee..."
Gone.
He looks up at her, holding his cup, and realizes she is trembling in the minutest of ways, vibrating in time with some ancient melody whose strains are only audible when two people make love. Do not be afraid, he wants to tell her, There is no reason to be. We will not be afraid anymore, I will hold your hand and we will laugh, laugh till the seas rise and the land sinks and nothing remains on this earth but the sound of waves and the echoes of our carefree laughter. Keep your secrets, only give me this, this moment, these silences, and I will not ask you for more. And we will be beautiful and terrible, broken and whole, silently screaming for all who care to listen.