Two sides, two fall.

I haven’t done anything.

He walked to Caryn and thought she had no idea. Sat. She didn’t, and neither did he.

Long dinner. Arguably too long, redwine as fuel, no salt. Nothing fit together right. He’d thought he had - he’d planned for so long - the solution. His solution smacked out-of-control fantasy and folly. Where was the healing? She wanted to soak her roots with salve; she wanted resolve from him. He heard she wanted decisions from others; only comfort for herself. He wanted something far different and further. Damn these hearing aides, they made no sense but squawks.

Cigarette with the wine. He’d started again, told her it was packs over a couple months. That much true if disingenuous. What does it mean to split filterless cigarettes with a straight razor, turning 20 into 60?

Too many words already. He stuck to the facts, then smoked another in the cold, after dinner, back stoop, farmland for romance, and snow. So much snow with tree breaks the only marks for distance.

…

Trust me now?

…

She sat in court again. Added motivation from the other side. She preferred neither, still imagining the court turn into a church where pews, broad aisles; and the judge came with equal measure of mercy for one of them just the same. He had been tried too, and yet here he sat in front of them all. Broken teeth and cut ears, this was a judge known for a past crippled in an alley, given into light. Happily broken, he rose from the bench.

“You’ll see our deputy is ready to see you out.”

She shook her head then wept in hands.

Judge’d seen it before, God so many times. Some thing different here, though. The light broke through, as beautiful as it ever was, it would bring her to mercy and whatever good, next.

She would not heed here. She wept, not rising from the table. The deputy went from order to sympathy that wouldn’t last. There was a window of gentleness, she wrenched her arms from him. This would go to worse, fast. Until the judge spoke.

“Mary, this is not the place,” even-handed, the judge.

“Sentencing is something else. Soon, you won’t have to wait,” he reached out.

…

“Why bother with all this?”

“I can’t help it.”

“That’s a cop-out.”

“Unless it isn’t.”

He shook, nervous, visible anger. She watched him tear down.

“There’s no point,” he steered and steamed, left the room. Then returned, “There’s no Goddamn point.”

She remained silent, watching more anger push. She was angry, just the same but pinned to hope with a wink in the eye.

Even angrier that wink. It used to be just for him.

…

The only thing I can tell you is to hold steadfast and proceed from love. Let hope light your step. Any time you lash out is forgiven, but not the way. For these are times where each step requires forgiveness and care, as if your very life depended on it, ever-reaching for new generations and for the soul’s quench, a Spirit’s fire. Nation-building before us, crumbled under us. The casualties don’t have to be prison, broken families, despair, beating or death. Forgiveness. Forgive me. I forgive.

She’d written in a cell. Somewhat comfort. Locked in, forced to here and a page. They had allowed her nubs for pencils. She still cried. They all cared for her.

…

I’m not talking to you. I’m talking to me.

What do you wish to tell yourself.

What lights your day in hope?

…

Work was a door every morning. Parked the truck. God it was cold. So cold with no hot water at home anymore to start the day. Winter’s cold past bones to the utter soul. In Northern Territory, when the money meant the most.

He walked in, creaking the long door behind him.

“Eh!” Yelled one of ’em. “You shut off our air! You get that water turned back on yet?”

Laughter, so funny. Not a damn’s worth a bit of funny to him. He shuffled snow from a cold coat’s shoulders. Melting already in here, slopping to floor. He was grateful for the heat at least. Doesn’t take long to need the door propped again. The creaking pushing that door.

“There!” One laughed, “We can breathe again.”

Mining was still hard work in the modern age. A smelter cave, all-in-one operation meant carving and boiling what was dug.

Of course they were unearthing something utterly different.

Don’t be amazed.

Don’t talk about it.

Don’t close the door.

Too damn hot.

…

Marriage was right and left. What keeps you with your spouse? What keeps you with those you were born to love?

More nubs. Cell tapped. Couple guards spoke her name softly, this was one.

Michael said, “Mary, what is at your fingertips now. They are completely black.”

“Carbon, she shot back. We’re all made of it you know.”

“Jesus,” he said. “We can get you more pencils.”

“Nubs,” she said.

…

The last great hope, they said, was in that smelter. Turn your phone into a saber. Whatever that meant. Mightier than the sword, they said.

He didn’t know, but hadn’t been here long enough. They’d all had their water turned off, purposefully, for years. They said, when you realize the work, you stay. No matter what. The work ends when it ends. They handed him a beer and he said whatever. They laughed, drinking every night’s lullaby.

…

At times, she wrote with her nails when she “ran out of pen.” Carbon filings stored like mechanics’s hands.

“I will run my time,” she resolved and wrote. “I will continue until I’ve run out.”

The steam inside this prison welled in a desert rain. She preferred being locked this high up in desert foothills surrounded by burn lands. Wildfires pushed at bay to protect, what? Prisoners?

…

Standing at the door between heat and cold. He was supposed to be out, but better to feel the heat and freeze. His choice was pain from both sides.

He thought of her, though less and less. The murder. The fault. His innocence, his guilt. She was the mad man that morning. God, she woke up then ran. Where? A last night in bed after long winter’s fight. Blast through the door, colder still a sunrise of terror. She would walk down, then find a store selling any gun early. They’d refused them in the house as conservative, scared of the consequence. It probably saved his life to delay her tumbling. Not in bed anymore, not awake, nor yet showered, a place unknown without consciousness or lit afire spirit for the soul. She came tumbling, all he could hear. She didn’t find him until she could down the road. Sun rising dusk. She shot another man, only then realizing in her still drunk, waking rage what she had done. She hadn’t even made sure it was him. Shadows were enough

He thought of his guilt in a long night where the battle of wills was a death dare. He had pushed too far. She raged even in her dreams.

…

Dark fields beyond this far North. Not a town for kilometers, then miles more. Tree breaks barely distinguishable from flat-out open. The same feeling of trying but looking out at dark-cool expanse, never satisfied.

But the flame he held alive, indeed that held him did something beyond. It was not him. It was not of his fruitless labor.

Lights. Shoots out of other souls he saw them and they saw each other. Lit incandescent, they could not be extinguished.