The Spaces In Between Novels & Stories

Tunde There was a slow traffic. I waited like others in the line for whoever or what ever that was blocking the road to clear. With each forward movement, the car infront of me made, I also moved to cover the space. Pedestrians could easily walk and cross inbetween the cars because they knew the cars could not speed up . I finally reached the point that was causing the delay. The road spoilt in the other lane and the people there were now joining the lane I was on. Immediately I passed that junction, I sped up free as a bird.

The two figures are present, clear, and entirely without faces. Samuel works on the quality of the space between the figures in the second week. The distance between them. How close is it? What that closeness communicates without words. I sit on the stool one evening and watch him adjust the space between the figures by a degree I cannot measure. “What are you doing?” I say. “Getting the distance right,” he says. “What is wrong with the distance?” I say. “It is too formal,” he says. “There needs to be less space. Not touching. But chosen proximity. The kind of distance that is not accidental.”

The room holds the between-time and the between-time is holding the thinking. He thought about the room holding the thinking. He thought about the between-time as the condition in which the thinking occurred — the gap, the between, the space that was not the work and not the rest but the attending space in between. He thought about the between-time room as the room prepared for the between-time thinking — the weight-bearing room and the limestone floor and the south window breathing the field and the hatch and the tea as the ceremony and the room holding all of it so that the thinking could occur in its correct condition.

The space between people. And whether it could survive being made optional. For now—it still existed. And for now— That was enough.

He looks at me. And in the space between us ... everything changes.

I can't do both. Silence. Then: *Then we find a third option. You come back mostly. But leave pieces behind. Deliberately placed. Wrapped around the voids. Connected to your center. Like satellites around a planet.* Present and plural. Singular and scattered. Whole and fragmented. *It'll hurt.* *I know. But I'll be with you. In the spaces between. Sharing the burden. You won't be alone.* *That's not fair to you.* *I'd rather have you fragmented than not have you at all.*

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT: THE SPACE BETWEEN HELD BREATHS Lena's Pov The night after I told him about the placement, I didn’t sleep. Not because of fear but because of space. The idea of it stretched between us like a living thing. Six months. A country away. Time zones and new streets and unfamiliar skies. It wasn’t a threat exactly, but it wasn’t harmless either. Space could soften things… or sharpen them into something you couldn’t touch without bleeding.

And it has decided, in this moment, that it has waited long enough. The ground continues to open. And in the spaces between, I feel it breathing.

Ernest said. "The cleared space after the four books is different from the cleared spaces between the books," Don said. He was looking at the county, not at Ernest. "The cleared spaces between the books were the spaces where the next argument was forming. This cleared space is not that. The four books are the argument. The argument is complete." He turned his gaze to Ernest. "I do not know what comes after the complete argument."