CARTOGRAPHICS

They drafted floor plans late into the night. Their arms crossed in confusion as they carried lines from one page to the next. Floorboards and walls joining to make corners were remembered and traced onto the blank spaces and old lawns were rediscovered from the past. They shared the history of dwellings once dwelled upon by loved ones past and present. Sharing the actuality of each others known spaces was more than a tease. It claimed progress and potential. They had never known the others´ world outside of the terms they chose to define them by. They were refined to the encasement of one room and it was not a blank canvas but a means to cage in dreams and reinforce a static state. The land laid itself out before them and it was hard to keep imaginations at bay.

She snagged her summer skirt on the hedge as she struggled through the gate with her basket filled with freshly picked flowers. A waft of bread baking escaped from the open window and fled into the fresh air. She whistles and pays no mind to the torn paisley and left the scrap of cotton behind for decoration. He pulls meat from the smoker and watches from the window as she walks towards the back of the house. He sighs to himself and let her bare feet against the summer grass take his breath away along with any remembrance of harder times. He traces the simplicity of her lines with his eyes and recalls the first time he asked if he might hold them in his arms. She walked in as she had always done. She walked in as she imagined she would that night they drafted floor plans late into the night. She walked in. She follows his movements and the weight of his thick head of hair and remembers the first time she dared to run her fingers through it. Kiss me she secretly whispers as he turns with a smile as though he felt her and all her demands before she entered the room. A flower falls to the ground at the same moment that a drip of fat releases itself from his covered fingers. She nestles into him and breaths him in as he resists spoiling the patterns wrapped around her and keeps his hands at bay until finished with preparing the meat.

He stood on solid ground and was etched into the grains of tradition. She was the unkempt red ribbon that was carried by the wind. Somehow they defied all odds and managed to occupy the same space in the most complementary of ways. She had never been defined or restricted to carry out her flare. He had never been forced to have an opinion because he had only ever known one existed.

The very walls trembled when light was shed the first time she opened the door to that house. It was judgment day and any one of them could be knocked down with disapproval. She could live anywhere, she recalls saying, but that by no means stated she wouldn’t make all efforts for it to be the best it could be. Even a tent would face the possibility of her redesigning its poles. He believed in function, she believed in freedom. He believed in the normality and the following of trends, she believed in the ability of unique to be comfortable and cozy. It started with the sharing of foundations. This is what I know to be home. This is what you know to be home. It started with the drafting of floor plans late into the night. “Does he have an opinion about where the couch should be, or which rug is more fitting?” she wondered that night. “Could she imagine living here?” he ashamedly asked himself as he described in detail the layout of the land. She decided that if he did she believed in compromise and conversation. If he didn’t then she believed in self-satisfaction and relentless creative input down to the doorknobs. Whether or not she could was forced out of his mind and deemed unthinkable.

She washed the dirt that was pushed into the rifts of her fingertips and let the hot water remind her of taking shelter from the scandals in the womb of the shower. “As long as the water is trickling down the curves of our backs,” she thought, “we are safe here”. He took hold of her from behind the sink and laughed. “This sink was a battle,” he said to the length of her neck. “Yes, but the tile was a compromise and there was no fight over the stove,” she replied back right after shaking off the water from her hands and running them past the lines of his jaw. He had an opinion so not to be forgotten in the design. She created battles for his sake knowing that her mind lent itself towards creating the perfect environment for him just as much as for herself.

They drafted floor plans late into the night. Their minds crossed in confusion as they tried to keep lines on paper and imaginations at bay.