Vault - Flash Fiction

Once we were gymnasts. Vaulting, tumbling and scissoring. Our bodies soaring, in defiance of gravity’s leadenness. Each was the other’s asymmetric bar containing their flight. Soft landings and angular handholds. Tucking, twisting and pivoting around each’s axis. Contrapuntal convolutions consummately confluent. Heads over heels over hips and all manna in between.

But eventually our mutual routines became routine. Repetitive, rehearsed, rehashed and rote. We became arrhythmic. Hand supination taken for supplication. We floored one another. Me with my fabric ribbons, you with sports ball. You wanted to club me, while I wanted you hanging at the end of a rope. And not even inverted. Each V-sitting at extreme opposite edges of the parallel bars to keep one another at legs' width. Our anatomies reasserted their asymmetricalness to one another on the bars, on the few occasions we made hate, our bodies clashed and collided rather than being cushioned. We flic-flac'd past one another in avoidance. You pommel horsed me, swinging round to keep me at bay or slice me in two. While I lost my balance when straddling the narrow beam of you. The white spray taking leave from your hands was not chalk dust. We stuck the dismount on one another.