Reaching for Connection Beneath

We're all interconnected you see, by the street light wires, connecting the poles of light to the traffic signs, spreading across cities like the axis on a grid… Or below, like the sewage system, from sewer to sewer, beneath, a flood of water moving in lines and turns, spreading across the city. Or even look above, the apartment we're in — the white panels of wood, crisscrossing each other to hold another structure above with humans inhabiting it.

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Yet when she made art, she took the structures of the rectangular canvas and stuck pieces of old English essays, acrylic paint, dust on the table, and scraps from her scrapbook collection and threw it up on the canvas with edges of paper hanging off. Yet when she took a shower, she rearranged her loose, fallen hairs on the bath walls to make a sprawl of wired black hairs bundled up and a "Hi" formed by four pieces of hair. She then displayed these exhibits to her art group and the pieces of hair fell off the walls, onto the floor of the bathtub to which she said was part of the art intentionally.

Structures are what she was accustomed to. Yet structure was the last inhabitant in her art.

Structures can shift in form and shape. When touching the beard of another man, closing her eyes, she sees Virgil. Virgil after a fresh shave, his slightly cleft chin, rugged surface, his strong eyebrows, and soft lips.

Moral, or Mo for short, and Virgil lived in the city. The city where lights stayed on until 4 AM with faint noises of the ambulance rushing through at midnight. They lived in a small apartment in an alleyway with greased bricks, creating a slippery welcome into their doorway. Mo and Virgil had started living together a year ago when they graduated from the same college with degrees in English and Art. Mo was an aspiring artist and a technical writer for a marketing firm whereas Virgil was an aspiring fiction writer with a job at a record store.

After Mo's 9–5, she met Virgil at the apartment, sitting on the couch that sat on the floor without its legs, writing his new fiction piece about a missing musician. Mo popped open a bottle of cheap red wine and gulped it heavily. She poured a glass for Virgil, but Virgil was fixed to his laptop. After a few punches on the keyboard, Virgil looks up to greet Mo with his eyes. He stares and smiles for a second. Mo joins him on the couch and puts her head on his shoulder.

Mo wakes up in a fetal position on the black leather couch; Virgil is stationed at the desk, typing away. Brian Eno's ambient music is playing in the background. Gushes of water flood through the pipes outside. The sky is dark in the alleyway with faint noises of car honks driving past the poorly drained city. Mo grabs the rest of the wine and pours it into her glass. When she finishes, she goes toward the refrigerator to grab hard kombucha. She sits on the couch as she watches Virgil pound the keyboard, wishing it was her that his focus was on.

"I'm gonna go…" Mo says as she grabs her coat.

"Where are you going to go this late at night?" Virgil's eyes still fixed to his laptop.

"I'm gonna go smoke a cigarette."

The cigarette she puffs — this habit was formed when she met Virgil a year ago at a rock concert. Virgil was standing outside with his friend Daniel, smoking a light blue Natural American Spirit cigarette. Mo noticed Virgil — his long, dark curly hair down to his shoulders, his bangs covering his eyes. A torn green t-shirt with old jeans. In turn, Virgil noticed Mo — her choppy short black hair, slender eyes, black monochromatic outfit, and quiet disposition as she stared at him. Virgil then went up to Mo and asked if she wanted a smoke and Mo, having never smoked a cigarette before, complied.

Mo still holds the cigarette between her thumb and pointer finger. Like a blunt. She still hasn't figured out how to flick the ashes from accumulating, so she'll let the ashes fall off naturally as it breaks.

A man from the pizza shop around the corner, struts down the greasy wet alleyway. "Hey, can I have a cigarette?"

"Sure," as Mo grabs her pack and hands the lighter to the man for him to light his own.

"Thanks… So, what are you doing out here this late?"

"I live here."

"Okay, well, I work right there… so I'll see you around?"

"Yeah sure…" moments after, Mo's vision blurs slightly then it focuses on the graffiti in front of the apartment building. There are two hands reaching to meet each other, but flames and water separate the two hands from coming together. The door opens and Virgil peaks his head out of the door under the ledge where Mo smokes.

"I thought I'd find you here… Come on, let's go inside. It's cold and raining."

Mo lets out her final puff. Crushes the cigarette onto the floor and reaches for Virgil's hand.