In-Between Alphabet: I is for Is

Is is a state a being, an existence, a presence of fact.  Is doesn’t acknowledge the past nor casts its eyes into the future, content instead in each fleeting snapshot image of the present.  Perhaps the Is that embodies now resembles nothing of the Is that embodies the next now, but both are true representations nevertheless.  Is can describe the most minute detail, microscopic in notice, or it can hold within it the grandest truth stitched into the fabric of the universe.  It can be rooted in the most obvious of reality, or it can speak of the complex profundity of the most hidden human condition.  Is is everything. 

She says Is in the midst of a quarrel, her hands slashing down in emphasis, the tips of her nails flashing white in the afternoon sun pouring through the window.  Frustration wells up within him, trickling through carved channels of affronted justice.  He wishes he could convey the thoughts rushing through his mind, that particular shape of emotions dwelling in him, but it becomes scrambled in his brain, mixed-up and confused and the words spilling from his lips are mere shadows of what he means.  They fly out into the air, these word-spirits, twisting and morphing, so that by the time they dip down into the canals of her ears, they resemble nothing of their origins.  She looks at him, hurt shimmering over her features like a heat wave over cracked tarmac, then volleys words back at him, words that hold no meaning except that they render him injured in a mirror reflection of her.  As she turns away from him, he realizes he’s won.  But winning scratches chalky and bitter in his throat.  He reaches out, her shoulder slipping away from underneath his fingertips, because the prize of winning is only loss.  He would rather lose a thousand battles if the consolation prize is her presence beside him.  She says Is, her features softening, the tear tracks drying on her cheeks, then reaches out back to him.