Hannah Vergult
Long Distance
Hannah Vergult
“
C an I tell you a story?”
“ Right now?”“ Yes. It’ s one my grandmother used to tell me.”“ Lily, we’ re in the middle of a serious conversation.”“ It’ s related, I promise.”“ Okay, go.”“ My grandma would start by saying‘ Once upon a time there was nothing’ and it would always confuse me. She would tell me to shut my eyes closed as tight as I could and if I couldn’ t feel wrinkles coming out of the corner of my eyes, then I wasn’ t closing them tight enough.”
“ Like this?” Isaac scrunched up his face in a way that Lily thought made him look like a child.
“ Just like that.” She smiled.“ That’ s what nothing is supposed to look like.”
They lay together on a mildly stained comforter under a flickering fluorescent light, both tired from a long drive. Lily played connect the dots on the freckles, moles, and other markings which sprinkled Isaac’ s arm.
“ So, in the creepy, swirling sea of darkness and nothingness, there was the lonely thinker. This is where I start to forget parts of the story by the way, but somehow the sun rises one day and then the thinker decides to create a being with two minds, because it understands the solitude of one alone. The being is half-male, half-female and its body is squished together, like an eternal embrace or something. But there’ s chaos in the universe because everything is mushed together and nothing is in order, so the thinker tears the being apart and separates them into the sky and the earth for balance. The sky is pushed up and she stretches herself over the earth like she’ s always trying to reach for him and they can’ t really ever be together again in the same way.”
Isaac sighed, eyes still closed.
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