It couldn't be comfortable, lying on gravel. Even the dust found a way in-between the one-thousand mountains littering the parking-lot. The stones were Everest, each standing miles high when viewed with the feudal pertinacity of an ant. From above, gravel was gravel. Easy to kick, no more threatening than chaff; flattened by tires and shoes and the shoulder blades of a girl in a rust-colored sweater.

"Run me over," she said, ignoring the sky that ignored her. Knees and nose. Up drawn peaks and natural cliffs. She had edges. But her face was shiny and smooth from one-thousand words a day that kept her indistinct and the sky, popularly upheld, was told not to notice a stone.

But there were many.  Different shapes and sizes, different sharpness, all gravel; marching one after the other toward the horizon. The paved road at the end of the driveway spat them back when they tried to cross. Shunting them to a catch-all on the shoulder. Here they spread. Falling out of line and getting swept back up again. 

Back into place.

From above, Everest was an insignificant stone on the tarmac. From below, it was a stalwart island afloat on the sea.

"Run me over," she said from below me. Her small chin doubled when she tipped her head to see me. Her nose sloped down now.

"I can't," I said.

Because I wasn't even gravel. I was the dust between. I didn't have shape. Light moved through me. Pieces of me floated with it; in through windows, in through the nostrils. I layered the immovable and lasted long after; pulling the shine out of car hoods and glass,

eating it.

The august sky was gray to me.

The sun didn't rise when I asked.

She. She was talking to herself—  

When I held my breath light flared. Cleaner. Brighter. Stronger. She walked on it, day-to-day. But that was a flinch, a hiccup in my brake line. I always came back; and she lied down again, my dust in her lungs, on that gravel with bits of rust-yarn from her sweater still stuck in its teeth. I was the dust between, blown into welts by one thousand words from strangers that kept her indistinct. I plucked out the manmade monotony in her life and wove the matte strands into a rope to choke her. Wake up. Get dressed. Grocers. Home. Clean. Bathe. Sleep. Wake up. Get dressed. Grocers. Lie down. Don't talk. Don't think. Sit still. Look pretty.

"Please," she said to me. Because I was her and she was me. Together. So separate.

It couldn't be comfortable:

lying on gravel with a rope around your neck.

"I can't." Only she could pull against me.

But They'd make her. The tires that shunted her to the catch-all alongside her sisters. They, who upheld the sky and paved the road she couldn't cross. They, who told her to run while I was going nowhere,

holding one End.

A/N: a random scribble I didn't know where else to post.