The companies called it eggshell

we had no say in

the color of the wall we looked at

her side touching mine

the only movement, our eyes

searching across as we were forcibly still under something overwhelming that made us silence our breaths so it may have just been the house and what passes through it

air exits and enters simultaneously

stopping to turn just in front of where we sat staring and then exploring with our eyes attached to faces absolutely gone

at once a part and a spectator of that nothingness

listening because who can’t

tongue adrift in thick

we did not say a thing, parched

we did not say a thing because as long as we sat in silence and managed the pain inflicted so far no more would come, no more would come than what already had if we just say in front of the air of the wall, changing directions and trajectories, forever an angular discrepancy between

>what was and

>what would have

we disengaged our peripheral vision so that we existed as color

not transcendent of form but a reduction of

we became what some companies call eggshell

which in its form is able to be used and afterward sit cracked and empty with lingering webs of something liquid, intended for protection

one of us should make coffee, i thought as i heard her breath

one of us should kill the other, i thought

it must be possible

the courts would understand if they heard

if they listened

if we could just get them to listen they would understand

we could sign papers against liability

we could have a lawyer witness the agreement and then one of us would murder the other in cold blood

each person following procedure as written

each person unfocusing their gaze and blurring their lines so that the act of the murder becomes merely a series of actions and reactions

mathematical

logical

unemotional

this is how it should be

we should be maths

we won’t continue with time until we become equations a child could solve

then when things make sense again

when we become truths independent of each other

when emotions become irrelevant

we can turn away from this wall and see things as a human does

see things like the body beside us

see each other as one stands up to grab the beans

and the other to fill the pot with water

and as the coffeemaker creates something dark and shiny and painfully impossible to hold we can make things too

we can make a plan

we can build skyscrapers out of our broken intimacy

and we can playfully push each other off them

like two people who’ve never seen a wall in their life