#rectoress

{ @rectoress ;;

⚢   Well, this is rich, coming from an Ancient One. Shall we retire to a cottage together, to cultivate our wrinkles and never re-establish any kind of online presence, as is appropriate for old expired grannies? This is a proposal 

        “Emptied,” Jane says, then nothing. Emptied of you. I do not tolerate it. I have tried.

        She’s tried, too. Been trying. She was drawing plans for a new desk, something she wanted just for the pleasure of making, to put her hands on the wood and metal and understand what would follow, because these were things that could be measured, molded, and brought to tidy and right-angled results--drew up the plans and thought of showing Tissaia, her pleasure dying at once, the way heat rushes out and vanishes into cold as the sun dips under the horizon--Tissaia.

        No answers to her text messages, or returns to her phone calls. No walks in the middle of the day together, to the art district, or into a bookshop, or just over to a bench in the park to sit and have tea and breathe fresh air. No holding hands, with or without leather gloves, down the street or at a quiet corner booth, or Tissaia’s wry voice and how it said her name, always her full name, “Jane Andrews,” at the end of a sentence. No kissing or sex, Tissaia’s mouth searing want onto Jane’s neck or her soft thighs framing Jane’s face, no more scent of Tissaia’s perfume caught like a ribbon on her clothes, or finding the narrow fabric of her panties stuffed into the pocket of her slacks. It had all felt so good it almost made Jane believe in sin.

        Something tickles her cheek, which she brushes away. Her fingers come off gleaming: it’s a tear. Just one.

        “I thought...” She stops. What did she think? That she was too much, maybe. Thinking of Tissaia too much, or wanting her too much. Naming the birds in the trees for her, and the different kinds of clouds. Asking her over too often, hoping Tissaia would look through her music collection or her books and find something to trigger a memory, a story, a glimpse into her inner world. Or maybe she was too little: cold, as the men she’d dated had always said, and peculiar. Playing with her toys in the corner, always the unlovable child.

        Her hands wring in front of her, one thumb digging hard into the opposite palm, squeezing her fingers. I do not tolerate a world emptied of you, Tissaia had said. I have tried. I have tried.

        “I thought,” she says, “you didn’t want to see me anymore. I thought...” She frowns. “I thought you were done with me,” she says. What else could she think? As though a thread stretched from here to there, and Tissaia had calmly, decisively cut the line from the other side. “But you were... Trying.” She tests the word out. “You were trying to see,” she says, carefully, “if you could... Tolerate it. If you could be without me. You were experimenting.” Tissaia’s life was the controlled environment, and Jane the variable. Remove the variable, what happens?

          She had had a handful of students over the years, many had followed her like lost little ducklings. Though they were all well accomplished by now, some still saw themselves as such and tried to wiggle their way back into the nest. None had succeeded. She stands facing a shelve of books, scanning over titles before she glances over her shoulder to the other woman. “Did I come all this way to compare teaching notes?” She raises a brow, though the lift at the corners of her lips show she’s teasing. “Because that might be a bluff I will have to call you on.”