In the Air and On the Sidewalks

by Amy Guth

She loved him so well and for such a long time that once she knew him and saw his days she was pained to see he failed to recognize her intentions and know her and understand the two of them to be on the same standpoint. His vigilance shocked her and made her grieve quietly as he threw statement after statement, each time thinking experience taught him to do such a thing, and each time thinking he was sufficiently protecting his own frightened heart, but unaware it was at the expense of, perhaps, alienating hers. She quietly hung up the telephone in the dark apartment and looked out onto the street below and wanted to cry just for the release but had no reason to, as nothing was left to wonder about, nothing was left unattended to, but somehow the conversation made everything seem unstable and made competitive things appear, instead of the easygoing things she wanted, not placed expectation upon, only wanted from him. Slowly and painfully, she again became aware that she was summed up all wrong, assumed to be an antagonist, miscategorized entirely and though the inside of her brain beat with such a long rope of unrequited something in his direction, she knew he saw none of it. For as long as she loved so quietly from so far away, she was both relieved and distraught to see they had hurriedly arrived at the point of argument and misunderstanding instead of still sitting back to see it all unfold as it would and to give her a chance to show her shy ideas of him. She fought the urge to believe she had everything wrong and began to hate the eggshells covering the sidewalks between them.

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Amy Guth, author of Under This Cover of Quiet, has written about blaxploitation, Judaism, feminism, media literacy, bandwagonism, art, cult films, racism, hate crime and social irritants for all sorts of places like The Believer, Monkeybicycle, blah blah blah. She's toodling around at the moment promoting her novel Three Fallen Women and having a very nice time, thanks. She blogs Bigmouth Indeed Strikes Again. Come say hi.