Swoop in. Words fill the page in her minute handwriting. Bitter words, pleading words, harsh words . . . hers and his in one. A small nimbus shines on her furious hand, her furious mind. Wind sways in the branches outside the window; cast and diffuse shadows in the cramped room. The scratch of her pen continues at its pace through the night in her hurry to record the plethora of thoughts secreted. Next door, he sleeps on his side and dreams of the carefree girl he married years ago.
Swoop out. His lawn mower cuts its way through the long grass. He dreams of a hammock strung between two shady trees, a cool breeze rocking him to sleep. Unaware, his machine slices at careful pieces of rockery arranged around the garden. Her garden, her house, her dream. She sits and plays an angry tune on the piano inside. Music drifts across the lawn to his ears as the mower coughs up its last splutter. His favourite song inside his head - he meets her under a starry night and a song.
Swoop in. A can of furniture polish abandoned on a table so clean it reflects more than its surroundings; her fingers run longingly over the ivory yellow keys she loves to play. Tunes waft through her mind as she succumbs to the spell once more. Later she will berate herself and scrub harder for her half-hour of pleasurable weakness. It is to his tribute that she should leave weaknesses to him.
Swoop out. He wheels the lawn mower slowly into the garage and promises to get it fixed. The lawn lies half shorn and for the whole world to laugh at him. Guiltily he looks up to the glass panes of the house in hope of seeing her, even her disapproving face. But all he can see is her dark hair glinting in the falling sun light, falling down her slim back; the hair she used to tease him, drive him mad all those years ago. It is still that hair, tied him to her captive, tied now to a body scrubbing furiously at dirt, the ever present invisible dust she sees on all that is hers. So much more that she sees on him but can never clean, no matter how much she tries.
Swoop in. Swoop out. Half-finished, completely worn; their various duties abandoned in the twilight of days and months and years. Love lust children all. Memory dreams of life (lives) passing, gone. Still she polishes her precious hard won trophies of life; he wishes for things of past and never to come. She spills out her soul in words dipped in the furious pot of regret, while the untapped reams within him, without her, fester.