The Book
11 In that bed full of geometric possibilities, Leah’s fatigued body fell silent and she spiraled into sleep.
2 Within her imagined world, the people she once knew circled around her as she sat with her back to the bed frame and reached her hand up, underneath the layers of her skirt.
3 She watched her hands move. She watched as her body curved and settled. And she watched Isaac step out from the crowd.
4 His hands replaced hers.
5 His movements replaced hers.
6 His smell. His texture.
7 And his eyes watched her as she watched his.
8 She awoke in their new bed flooded in sweat.
9 And then Isaac.
10 Then breathing. Then moaning. Then soiled sheets. Then back to sleep and to the dream of fucking. Then awake once again before the morning light.
11 Upwards, a hundred apertures in the angled roof revealed just as many stars.
12 She closed her eyes, blinking them away, and Isaac touched her arm, motioning to the ceiling.
13 He spoke to her and said, I cut those holes while you slept.
14 For you. For you to sleep under stars that shine beyond the city.
15 But Leah shuddered and imagined the
stars gazed into her.
16 Eyes—each one an eye of some god that would spy on the world she and Isaac created.
17 What then was there to do. What then could Leah do to stop the eyes from invading their Eden.
18 As Leah fell back asleep, Isaac saw the stars rotate and form new constellations.
19 He wondered at their Eden.
20 He watched the eyes above shift then point to lands beyond the outer wall. 21 And Isaac considered whether a single circulatory system could sustain both Leah and himself.
22 The Eden they had created was but a point, not the center, within a world filled with ideas beyond The Book.