'The Way is Open' by C. Oulens

As if there was a way out! Ever! 

The first arch of her eyebrows — the left raised slightly higher — pierced him and hovered. Down they fell, the arrow returning with what she sought. 

“Words, anyway, are a waste of breath,” she’d say. Yet she knew how to know. 

Arch after arch stripped him of disguises, rehearsed selves. Each lowering brought him out, leaving something of her inside: a movement, a habit, ways of seeing rain, squirrels, pain, silence. 

“The way is open,” she announced one day, her arch gone. A smile curving. As if there was a way out. Ever.