We Sleep In Pairs

"What do you mean?"

I pause in my flimsy explanation, looking up at it, trying to see where I might imagine eyes to be. My first thought is where the two parts branch from the body, the moving limbs. I imagine eyes on each side, like a horse, gentle. Long eyelashes. Then I think of bug eyes, more apt for its multiple legs. Shuddering, I move from the image. I think of human eyes, kind, maybe weathered. Kissed by the sun, smiling at me. "Can you think of an apple?"

The limbs cease swaying. There's a pause. The second voice rings out. "Apples are fruits."

"Yes. But can you think of just one?"

Another pause. It feels awkward. It feels like I've sworn in church, and everyone has turned to stare.

The first voice answers, and there's something like bells that accompany it. "More or less."

"Okay, then," I say immediately, glad to have the common ground. "Then I am that apple. And you're like... you're like two bananas, still joined at the stem."

There's a third pause, and I feel like I'm getting nowhere again. The glass between us is clean and see-through, almost impossible to notice. It feels like we could be together if I set my mind to it.

"And every day, you are 'alone?'"

I swallow. "Don't make it sound sad."

The first limb jerks up. "Did we?"

"No, I... yes. Every day we're alone."

"You said we," the second chimes in again, with those bells. I wonder if that's laughter.

"Yes, I mean we as a species. Or, well, we as a planet. Every one of us exists alone."

"But what is 'alone?'"

I lift my shoulders and drop them, helplessly. "I am my own person. I do whatever I want to do."

"But you said you exist within society, like us. This doesn't permit you to do what you like." The second limb has moved lower to the ground. Seamlessly, the entire creature drops to the floor, into a sit. There was no outward discussion. As gangly and bumbling as it could have been, it is instead graceful.

"Okay, sure. There are laws that I abide by. People exert power over me. But I'm still alone. When I'm in my room, when I make food, when I... go to the bathroom. When I sleep at night." I look to the right, wondering what the others are thinking of this conversation. I hope they're bored by now. "I can even be alone with people."

The first voice murmurs something I don't quite catch, then repeats, "Alone with people?"

"Because..." This is hard. I don't want to explain this. "Because no matter how close we get, there are still parts that people don't understand. Sometimes I wonder if that's what a relationship is. A battle, or a journey, or a challenge to try and completely understand one person. Some people spend their whole lives trying. Some give up."

"You will never be fully understood?" Something inside me turns over at the sound of its voice, the incredulity. "There is no one listening?"

"You must understand this. You must communicate with others and find it difficult to always make sense."

The two limbs, the creature, pauses. Are they conferring? The bells ring out from the second one, and I am filled with jealousy. A conversation I'll never be a part of, a secret I'll never know.

"Do your hands listen?" The first asks.

I gesture wildly, trying to understand.

"Do your hands understand you?"

"That's not... my hands aren't separate from me. They aren't-"

"We are not separate from each other."

"Yeah, I know. Thanks for digging it in-- my point is that I can't converse with my hands."

A pause. The second speaks. "That must be nice."

"Huh?"

"The quiet." The bells again.

I laugh too. It's nice. "There have been moments where I've really felt like I'm connected with someone. Little shared looks, moving to do the same thing, finishing sentences. But we're still separated."

"By what?"

"By..." I grasp at it all, trying to follow. "By skin. By thoughts. I'll never really know what someone else is thinking."

They both nod. They understand this -- there are others in their world. They speak because of this.

"So that's us. That's the concept of 'one.'" I search their body for some sort of recognition.

I don't think it's there. Close, but not quite. There's another moment of silent conference, and they seem to drop the premise for now. The first turns to me once more, with a final question. "And you dislike it?"

"What?"

"You said it sounded sad."

It's a topic I don't know how to answer. I think of touch, of lips on mine, of little gasps and shared breaths. I think of the words that fall from tired mouths, dropping onto pillows and swimming in warmth. I think of laughter, of dancing in kitchens. I think of bodies I have known and faces I have loved, of hands I have held, of eyes that have stared into mine, of whispered love notes, of peace.

And I think of mirrors that wear my smile, dirt between my toes, my own breaths. I think of the softness of my own hands when I touch my own skin. I think of making my bed. I think of writing. Imagining. Of reading. I think of the body I have stretched and grown and mangled. And I think of how I healed it.

"Sometimes it is. Sometimes it's nice."

"Sometimes it's nice," they repeat together, and I begin to cry.