He holds onto her as if magnets were implanted under their skin, their closeness under the rule of physics rather than their own will. One magnet is in the palm of his left hand, one pulls from his right hip, another one is embedded where the shoulder blade and collarbone meet in the right side of his body. His mind might go adrift, as it often does, but the magnetic fields between the two of them keeps him anchored to this world, close to her.
If there aren’t external magnets in his proximity, if she is far from him, no force takes place, and he wanders alone in the fields of his mind. Then, his body bends under the spell of his three internal magnetic points, the boy becoming an entanglement of attraction- hip to shoulder to hand. He wobbles back and forth on his back, trying to get hip closer to shoulder closer to hand. As skin rubs against skin, the two metal soulmates ardently attempting to meet each other, he withdraws into the depth of his mind, losing cardinal points as he looks for the architecture of thoughts. Physical reality is a minuscule point in the landscape at this point.
He doesn’t mind staying there, he actually loves exploring the inside of his skull a bit too much, or so others say. Teachers, parents, friends, even lovers have complained about his absent looks, the emptiness of his presence. But not her. Sophia welcomes his need to explore further the complexity of his reflections, and delightedly provides him with her own magnetic points (left knee, right thigh, right arm) to stay safely attached to reality as he wanders off.
The magnets can move too. Smoothly traveling north, one moves on the bend of her neck, where he likes to rest his head -one magnet is now in his temple. Magnets can also expand, covering his whole front and her whole back when they lay one on top of the other in the garden. And they can become minuscule, the top of her fingertip caressing his eyelids, the point of his tongue licking her elbow, their lips grazing.
Sophia can’t remember the exact moment her life started following these new rules of attraction. It must have happened in P.E. class, when together with a bunch of sweaty teenagers she learned to climb a pole and throw a disc and jump obstacles. It must have happened as she realized she couldn’t balance her body in a handstand and center the basket with the ball and jump up high. Somewhere between childhood and adolescence Sophia’s body started rejecting gravity, hating the limits and embarrassments it caused her. Her body was changing, her breast becoming heavy, the magnets started growing inside her body. At the beginning they were only two, residing behind her pupils. Her gaze was glued onto Tim’s body, her eyes capturing every detail of his movements. Similarly, Tim’s body grew from smooth curves to bony edges, and as his bones elongated and poked his shirt, two magnets started appearing inside his skull. The magnetic field was now palpable, air became thick as their gazes defined the corners of space. Sophia and Tim would spend long hours looking at each other in class, on the tram, at the school entrance. New rules of attraction made their way into their life, their movements. They started carefully orbiting around each other, holding the other’s curious gaze as they got closer to each other. They started sharing stories of themselves, playing with the movements of the magnets as they flirtatiously touched each other’s hand, shoulder, hip. It didn’t take long for these swifts contacts to transform into tight hugs and hand holding under the desk and wet kisses behind the bus stop. Magnets started multiplying, growing like fungi under their skin. Their whole bodies were now longing to be in contact with each other. The boundaries of their beings started melting, softened from the pressure of attraction. As their relationship grew stronger, fungi sprouted through the change of seasons, Sophia and Tim became an enclosed magnetic field, the magnets in their bodies determining the margins of their unit -here it’s us, outside the rest of the world.
They arrived at the point where their whole life, interests and needs, got sucked into their relationship, it was a black hole determining all forces of gravity. Sophia had to admit she liked it there, it was easy there. Although it was true that sometimes she felt a bit lonely too. Not because she needed another person, their ecosystem was self-sufficient, but because she felt sometimes Tim was not really there. Physically, yes. But his mind, mmm, his mind was somewhere she couldn’t always grasp. It was like behind his pupils, behind his magnets, his mind would escape their magnetic field. There were hints, crumbles forgotten along their story together. The lost thread of a conversation, a missing piece of the puzzle, his words mumbling and stumbling while telling a story. Sophia had meant to ask him about it for a long time. If everything was alright. But then he would come back, eyes vibrant as falling stars, his gaze always falling, following her. Sophia always thought she might have been mistaken.
One day Tim came up to her, held her face within his hands: “This is how you hold my heart”.
Then he gently lifted her pinkie with his, intertwining their fingers: “But this is as much hold as you can get of my mind”.
Sophia felt confused and betrayed and she thought she heard the wrong words adding up in a meaningless sentence. A part of her however, knew she might have found the lost piece of the puzzle.
Sophia sat down and held his hands, both of them, tight. “Walk me through your thoughts, where are they going?”. Sophia wondered if she could ever scratch the landscape Tim was pursuing in his mind.
“Picture this. There’s a large, green field, no edges to fall from. The grass is tall and your feet can feel every inch of its growth. The sky is clear blue, it has the intensity of a crayon drawing made by a child. There are butterflies and ladybugs and worms and a cat stretching in the sun and a monkey climbing on a tree. There’s a mountain growing up high and a river running down and the wind is dancing. You are standing in the middle of it all. If you want, you can stretch your arms and tickle the sky. Or jump and lay halfway through what is up and what is down. You can roll backwards and walk further and explore the aboves and dive in the beyond. There’s nothing keeping you to the ground. Nothing bringing you to the sky. It’s just you and your world and in there. No gravity, no magnets , no more pulling limbs and stretching skins. Just you. You’re free. Underground there are roots to follow and caves to discover, magma to heat. In every direction you move there’s an ecosystem multiplying and expanding. Birds mating, spores spreading, trees growing. The seed sprouts and grows into a plant, which blooms into colorful flowers and transforms into fruit. It’s seed again. Picture this Sophia: the world is without limit, there is no gravity no rules just being and exploring.”
Two magnets are in their palms now, one in the top of a fingertip.
Behind her eyelids, Sophia’s eyes see a bright sky and a blooming tree and a rollercoaster of hills and mountains. She imagines stretching her fingers and tickling the sky but somehow she can’t reach it. Her brows furrow. “Tim, I picture it and I see it but I can’t grasp it”.
“That’s because it’s not your world, it’s my mind”.
“I don’t understand”.
Tim’s magnets move on his head and nose, which are now pressing against Sophia’s forehead and nose.
“There’s this place in my mind, the place you’ve just seen, that can’t be contained in the corners of our magnets, nor grasped by another mind, it doesn't matter how strong and close we are. I really like it there, I started going there when I was a kid. My parents were always arguing and they would lock me in my room with a bunch of colorful crayons. To not hear the slaps and the slams and the slack. I started blooming the trees and rising the sun and growing the grass. I grew my garden and built my city and explored further through caves and mountain tops. I really like it there. Even too much.”
“What does it mean?”
Sophia exhales, she feels a magnet slipping out of her mouth.
“When I met you, I found a way to root myself in solid ground and not a pastel world. And I like it here too, oh Sophia, I love it here. For the first time I feel I’m experiencing love and life, I can feel safe moving through the world knowing I’ll get unharmed to you, with you, all the time. I know that if I feel lost the magnets will safely lead me home. To you Sophia. But this doesn’t mean that my world ceases to exist. I need it sometimes too. I need to water the plants and feed the cats and explore the new projects of the ants.”
Sophia and Tim sit by the side of the road. His haircut enhances his receding hairline, it’s adulthood catching up on his crayon dreams. He leans onto her, his blue jeans brushing her naked leg. Sophia takes his weight and burdens, she recently cut her hair shorter, a French bob, and enjoys feeling the wind brushing against her neck, flowing through her blouse. Anchored to each other, they build a magnetic field for his mind to wander without getting lost. Every time a path gets too meandering, a cave too deep, he tunes back to the pressure of Sophia’s thigh against his right hip, the warmth of her skin against his hand. As long as he doesn’t physically leave the magnetic field, as long as they’re together, he’s okay, and she’s happy to be the gravity that keeps him down.