She ran her fingers through her dirty hair, she was through with thinking of him, through with caring for the steel soul inside the beast, when they both know it was no more than a baby rabbit, shivering in the cold, frozen in place, waiting for a hawk.
"Jesus, Miera, could you stop writing such dark poetry?" he practically spat out his coffee, all over the white linen table cloth with tiny flowers embroidered on it, the one nice thing she owned, which was probably from a garage sale anyways. The mood began an ascent toward cacophony, although it was silent.
Break the noise.
"Well, then, turn on a light, for Pete's sake," she replied, flipping on the cold bulb.
It hung there, from the ceiling, casting shadows as they stared. First at one another, then at the envelope.
It had a small bird on the stamp, a perfect drawing, full of tiny lines.
The lines on her fingerprints made many tiny rows, like a sand garden, raked and raked into infinity, the DNA patterns that she had in the womb, now were here, in the flesh, full grown. It was just her hand, one of 14 billion hands on Earth at this very moment. At least that is the Math if there's 7 billion people, most with two hands.
Knocks on the door. Time for the train. Alarm goes off. Church bells toll. Car speeds by. Bus engine revs up.
Standing there, outside now, everything is quiet and moving, like being in the bottom of a river, in the crystal clear, winter air. Spacious and making her feel like a fish in a tank. Trapped but you can't see the edges. It seems fine enough, but there's a sense of limits that you just can't shake.
Against her chapped lips, her voice is going numb. Let it stay still, for a moment. The wind is cold, in Chicago it's called "the Hawk."