..the pink hat par regan taylor the pink hat and the blue hat went Sunday shopping on a Monday. the aimless pace of that day could carry through to any day of the week if they wanted it to. if they neglected to think about it, the fact of the day never showed up on their landscape. they lived by the hour instead. and the season.
the pink hat was considering the season that day. for a week and a half of unmarked days she had been thinking about the best way to spend some of their time. now that the season was changing she knew it would be easier. so she and the blue hat went out in the afternoon, taking their time forgetting keys and bus tickets. leaving the door locked behind them as usual.
the pink hat found that every place they shambled into was way ahead of her, seasonally and otherwise. by lunch she felt ready to appreciate midmorning bustle. at midafternoon she looked up expecting midday sun. for an instant she felt slow, feeling her age again. then she saw that everything else was faster than it should have been. the blue hat marked it up to daylight savings time. they had been eating dinner at four since the time changed. keeping up a constant –– they thought –– but wouldnt do the math to prove it.
the pink hat felt the web that grew between her and the blue hat, she felt it growing every time they were publicly together. when they left their house they were more a pair than they were inside the house. there they were not a set of two but just some items in a collection including the walls and the pets and the pets’ ghosts and the furniture. she could go for days in the house without seeing the blue hat, if it happened that way. outside, the pink hat knew, she was obviously the blue hat’s counterpart. they stood out; they joined hands. if they didnt have hands they would be matched in any crowd anyway. the web grew when they went out because anyone could tell they were two parts to a set. her moments of forgetfulness faded out when his slid in. she didnt even notice his shuffle anymore and could see in his thick eye that he was no longer aware of the way she quaked at traffic.
the web scared her a little, because she knew she’d never been webbed to anything but this blue hat. years were marked off by the appropriate gifts, the right levels of special occasion. and what if he had been the wrong blue hat all along? and then she forgot about that too and went back to recognizing, with an esteem for simple familiarity, the back of his head for the thousandth time that Monday.
the pink hat shopped as if it were Sunday. the blue hat followed her, unsure. but sure. she only had to touch the corners of her dry mouth to assure the blue hat. Monday moved at least an hour ahead of the pair they were to everyone but themselves. fashion frightened them. clocks looked off. the former institutions of the neighbourhood were still closed for good. the dollar went nowhere but they only really minded so they would have something to say. clerks and bus drivers were stranger
than ever. the pink hat and the blue hat ignored each others sounds and paid attention to each others hands and mutated eyebrows (hers invisible; his beyond discipline). she watched him check himself every time hers shifted altitudes. it was a nerve she touched when she touched their web.Monday was all business for everyone but the pink hat and the blue hat. they noticed but didnt see. their eyes were thick as milk and warm with love and threaded to the others eyes. both turned outward to see different things in the same way. they misunderstood everything with the same degree of frustration. and soon forgot it. still considering the season, the pink hat felt this one settle on the ones before it like a flake of soap into the box. when she looked at the blue hat she felt it settle like a looped thread onto a web. the season settled with as much weight as a day, as a hand into a familiar hand, and forgetfulness settled with it.
The end of the peel...
... wtf?
