more now because of how much this hurts her

The following is an unpublished piece of fiction I wrote for a project I've since shelved. Enjoy.

In many ways I am drawn to just how much trouble I have with the infinite, or maybe not the trouble I have with it but the trouble it dredges in me when I want so much for there to be nothing beyond me, beyond the way my hands are shaking, beyond the sting of the burns on my fingertips where the gas I poured on her trailer splashed on my hands and the flame from the match I lit caught more than just the trailer on fire and after I was able to put my hands out by driving them into the loose snake’s home desert sand that’s stuck in everything I own after three months out in the Anza staring up into the stars that make it impossible to feel  limits anywhere when that’s all I want; just limits that make boundaries that make recognizable spaces out of my days and decisions (because they’re all decisions, all free will, all choice even when we aren’t making them for ourselves) but the limits are crushed when I look at the stars and the closest I come to praying is to beg out loud to anything that’s out there show me where the walls of existence are because maybe just maybe there are none and maybe just maybe what I see when I look into the flames of the trailer from just outside the circle of orange they create, the trailer she let me stay in for free and probably out of some kind of guilt, what I see is just how limitless it all is in how the flames rise up toward the pinholes of starlight that choke the blackness that would have been comforting without their whiteness and what really crushes me is how much space there is between the tips of the fingers of fire I made and the edges of atmosphere tainted with starlight and I’m about to turn away and walk into the darkness of the desert with my eyes down so I won’t have to look at it all anymore when I hear her car pull up in the squeal of brakes she knows she needs to fix but can’t afford to and before the car has completely stopped moving she is out of her seat and walking toward the metal box home that is now folding in on itself, the weight of its walls and the speed of the burning pulling it in on itself like a collapsed star turned black hole and I realize that I have backed up at least a dozen steps to make sure I am covered in the darkness and then I watch as she stops a short way from it all, probably at just the point where the heat of the flames and the uselessness of their reach pushes her back and for a minute or probably more she just stands with her back to me and I paint the expression she must be wearing on her face in my mind and then she begins spinning slowly, a wailing noise coming from her mouth and when she has turned to face where she can’t see me standing peace fills me for the first time because her face is wrapped in a mask of pain that looks like no movie I’ve ever seen and no description I’ve ever read or could ever write and I feel finite in the moment.

I do not hate her. I love her, more now because of how much this hurts her.