Eve

And so it came to pass that on a few days after the Winter Solstice, he came to find himself outside a doorframe in a place where he realized he was uninvited.

His hand actually paused, just a second.  He had no gifts, he had no wrappings.  He barely had any change in his pocket and most reasonably he had no idea how this was going to go.

He knocked.  Fortune's first gift to him was that she answered.  It could have been a multitude of guests or residents, but she was the one who appeared.

Later, when he was alone, he liked to think that the first thing that registered in her eyes was wonderment, disbelief.  But later still he realized that the first thing that registered was frost.  And it was not seeming to melt anytime soon.

What are you doing here? she asked, pulling the door shut, the warmth and light from the house abruptly darkening.

I fell out of the sleigh, he offered.  She didn't smile, rather she stood there, back against the door.

Allright.  Sorry.  I just started walking, and the next thing I knew I was on a plane and then I was in a car and now I'm here.  I didn't, to tell the truth, really think about it.

She moved her head back and forth, like she was saying no.  Her arms were folded tightly.

You shouldn't have come.  You should have called.

There's a lot of things I should have done.  But I didn't.  

Well how am I supposed to deal with this?  I can't bring you inside.  I can't have you here.

He stepped back, and looked up.  The house lights kept the sky from being too dark, but he was pretty sure there was a lot of heaven up there.  He looked back at her.  And saddened.

I wasn't hoping for a Christmas miracle, he started.  I just thought that perhaps, maybe I could surprise you, and at the very least that I could see you unexpectedly.  That maybe you had wished, or hoped, or flipped a coin or broken a wishbone and that the thought thumping in your skull was that I might appear.  And so I came.

She kept her head shaking back, that "no" motion.

Even if I had wished any of those things, it wasn't like I expected it to happen.  I just cannot believe you're here.

Well.  I am.

Well, you gotta go.

I know.  He started to turn, taking a step backwards.  And then he stopped.

I just wanted you to know that there is such anticipation in knowing that I might see you.  There is such child-like laying awake at night knowing that I might be near you.  There is an anxiety that the next few minutes I will be without you...and I guess I just wanted to prove to myself that that was in fact the way I felt. Knowing you...every day is like Christmas Eve.

He finished and turned down the walk.  He heard the door slam.  He looked up, could finally see the stars.  Saw one bright one and kept walking to the car.

Prayer

In the morning it is the barely perceptible release of your name from my lips, emitted as a whisper, quietly slipping from me and into the quiet white light of the dawn.  I may not even realize the passage, I may never understand its origin, but I do remember the song that plays in my head when I form the letters that form your name.

In the mid-day it is an interruption, a pause...reflection of a time and a moment, when I sense the presence of you though you are quite distant.  Your silence is worse than well-chosen words so I fill in the gap myself...imagining words bespoken, words imagined, the religion of you converting my brain to a simple flame that alights and darts to your gaze.  I murmur your name louder, and it fills the room, occupies the void, echoes and returns to me a picture-postcard of a perfect face.

In the evening it is a mourning, the reluctant admission of yet another day without you. It is a name emitted as a sigh, drawn out and faltering, a wondering if this might be a collapsing ending or a potential beginning. It is unknown and unintended.  It is a consequence, a potential sin.  It is covered in guilt and put away to wash clean.  It is a goodbye.

And there are other times,

mostly after nightfall,

when the morning is still far and the light is still dim

and I merely imagine your name

and it is not a word

and it is not a noun

and it is not a noise, it is not a sound

and it is not a song, and it is not some call,

and it is not just letters that happen to fall.

Rather

it is simply something else. Something wholly and entirely something else.

It is an ache.

joyeux

What do you want for Christmas?

He asked her in the outline of an evening, when the contrails of planes were piercing white in the afterglow of the sunset.  She was looking up, watching them.

I wish I was on one of those planes…maybe heading to the ocean.

He looked up, watched as a blinking red light stole across the west, hurtling at over 500 mph.

If you were there then I’d be talking to myself.  And I doubt that is what I’d want for Christmas, he remarked.

She turned around, regarding him.  Her arms were folded, her eyebrows arched.  Well maybe you’d be on one of those planes as well.

The same plane?

Maybe.  But not First Class.  That’s where I’d be.  You’d be…like, in Coach.

Coach?

I’d send you drinks.  You know, from First Class.

I don’t think they allow it.

Hmmm…it isn’t looking good for you then.

He inhaled a little, she was close enough for her lotions to briefly alight upon him before being whisked away in the wind.

If you and I are on the same plane, I’m sure I’d be just fine he said.

She turned upwards again, the sharp angles of her jawline arrow-like to the sky.  The evening colors were no longer pastel but darkish, making the smearing contrails stand out even more.  He imagined as a child that she pretended she could fly, arms straight out in front of her, legs perfectly straight…probably hair perfectly aligned as well.  He half-smiled at that image.

What are you smirking at? She asked, moving towards him.

Nothing.  Not a thing.

I don’t believe you.

Fine.  I was picturing you flying.

Flying?  Like sitting up front with you in the back?

He nodded slightly…but then added I was actually imagining you going all superman-like and bouncing around up there.  Imagining you as a kid…not doing that now.  I got a glimpse of what I thought you might be like as a child…and that made me smile.

But you were smirking.

Allright, I imagined you still had perfect hair. 

Ah.  Okay.

The banter never really crept too seriously.  It wasn’t their nature.  Keep it light.  Keep it right.

In some ways she crossed him like those contrails…but as he thought more about it he realized it was likely the other way around…she was as widespread as the sky…gorgeous in a sunset, storming in a winter, gray in a funk, but never ever quite the same day to day.  And rather it was him that crisscrossed her, his disruptions temporary, his mark not permanent.  He was a contrail blown against her, that ultimately dissipated.  He hated that.

Boy you’ve suddenly gotten very serious she said, and he realized she was standing in front of him.  In the darkening mood of the evening it felt a little cooler.  He reached out and he pulled her into him, her folding neatly against him and tucked in.  He put his mouth slightly on her ear and whispered.  Her head moved up and down in a slight acknowledgement.

He looked up at the scattered stars intermingled with the few planes he could still see. 

He didn’t want to leave.

He had his gift.

The Violence in Violating Social Norms

There may be a room full of people; there may be a room full of air.  There may be star-strung candles alight against the gloom.  There may be the delicate chords of a piano that levitate around the swirl of movement and blur of waiters in their dance of dinner.

It is an evening.

It is a time that I seek the only things darker than the December sky, the smoldering blackness of your eyes across a room.

There may be a table of flowers, a shimmering of candles.  There may be folded up napkins, and chevrons and plates. There may be the slight scent of flowers and paper, ice in glasses, the spread of silverware.  

There is properness, there is decorum.

There is disquiet, there is disturbance.  A slight altering of the angles, as I sense your presence and feel the brightness, the far-away headlight shine as you break free from a crowd.  The glide of you, the turmoil of you sliding into the view and eclipsing the candles strung high in the air.

It is eventide.

It is a time that I sense the only things warmer than the wax dripping in the votives is the blood rushing through my veins as you approach.

There may be strangers, discussions.  Handshakes and clenches.  Staccato laughter and knowing smiles.  It is the very slight, most socially acceptable placement of your hand on my shoulder as you glance against me on your way away from me.

There is absence, there is departure.  The contrast of colors of you as you rob me of the view in the wake of your walk.

There is etiquette, there is decorum.  There is a quick-glance but not staring.  There is appropriateness, beneath the quiet whites of the candle lights.

It is gloaming.

It is a fracture when the sudden collapse of plates beneath a waiter’s hand explode as crystal meets tile and shatters in pieces across an echoing hallway. It is gasping and unrestrained, the tumble of pretty little pieces, the fragmentation of sturdy objects, the crack, the crash, the eruption of kinetic force and heat as the glass careens and cuts.

It is a time when I sense the only thing more violent and explosive would be the moment when you and I collide.

Ammunition

From far away, your visage is an outline, a delineation…a contour of you against the world, a flower stem arching upwards through a crack, a portrait etched slightly across the horizon.  I imagine the collapse of distance between us, compressing, contorting, anticipating, hurrying…air molecules colliding as they get pushed by our gravity condensing together…

You enter my mind’s eye sweetly, your stare scorching, your eyes tracing their dark charcoal path and the hot-candy presence of you completing the damage.  Fusillade from afar.  I can still see the distant smoke of where you stood and where you landed upon me, inside of me…through me.

So very different when you are near me, point blank, close enough to see the blink, hear the breath, the slight movement of hands.  Dangerously close, close enough to touch, close enough to reach.  Close enough to grab and twist and close enough to know not to run.  And knowing not wanting to run anyways.  Proximity fuses, detecting, exploding, destroying.   A salvo of sensory inputs…tearing, ripping, shredding in their devastating closeness. 

You enter my mind’s eye starkly, your stare blazing, your eyes enveloping me in their wholeness and the corona of your presence radiating throughout me.  You explode inside of me, devolving, bits of you hurtling into me, visceral, bone-snapping, tissue-ripping, energy-sapping, heart-tearing, until the whole of me has become a hole from you.

 

What have I learned from you?  How much you can hurt.

Apricity

It is in the cold barrenness that forgets.  It is the cold tile on the feet.

It is the movement from a warming bed to a graying morning that tugs at you to remain.

To come back, to rejoin. 

It is desertion. 

It is the unoccupied space.  It is the echo of footsteps on a winter road.

 It is the cold seat of a car left overnight.

 It is the first breath in a frost-laden landscape.

 It is a lonely chill wrapping itself around you.

It is a walk alone beneath a dead-stone moon.  It is a wind that carries no scent but of something empty. 

It is an opened Christmas box, tattered beside a garbage can.

It is an icicle, snapped in half.  It is the gray of roadside snow.

It is the melted ice, stuck to the bottom of the shoe, dripping into a puddle of cold.

It is the chill of a window, to a nose, breath fogging below, blurring the outside. 

It is the brunt of brake lights, mirrored in wet pavement, through a sleet covered windshield.

It is black dust of a dead fire.

It is the cold stillness on the steering wheel. 

It is the wistfulness of a brief sky before becoming cloud-covered, snuffing out stars that poured cold-light.

It is stepping out of a shower into cold bathroom air, the towel too far to reach.

It is the sound of the door closing off the warmth of the home to the cloying cold of a morning.

It is the clutch of winter, dead hands, dead heart, closing its grip upon me.

Until that moment, that one scintillating incandescent moment when I see you…

And I forget that I was ever cold.

Artists & Chalk

They walked amongst the colors, the tabletops strewn with glass and lacquers…artisans and crafts, the smell of funnel cake wafting through the air.  It was hot, windless…he had bought her a strawberry margarita and that had been devoured quickly.

Her cheeks were high pink.

She had purchased some silver earrings and a pair of low boots that had the Star of Texas on them.  Wrapped in white paper they were now in a bag that he carried.  She dawdled as she walked by certain stalls, smelling a candle, crinkling her nose.  She laughed at the stuffed armadillos, looked intensely at the dried flowers and fingered the ends of an orange scarf.  He watched her from afar, bemused.  She caught him staring and flashed a quick smile but then immediately started picking up some soaps.

Music started from across the long lawn, on a stage where a man and a violin played with two singers and guitars. The sounds followed them as they drifted amongst the people.

It was a soundtrack of an afternoon.

He had come out in a whim, knew that she had been out there and he almost discounted the effort in fear that she would think he was essentially stalking her.  He wasn’t, and she knew that, but he also didn’t want to break the icicle-fragility of their interactions.  She had actually been pleasantly surprised, or at least that is how he remembered it.  And mentioned this artists’ market and this afternoon and then he was suddenly watching her in the heat.  

It was abundantly clear that she was home…the way she walked, the smile, the energy.  She had chatted in the car ride over, pointing out restaurants and places, describing the streets and the stores.  He had never really heard her talk so much…and he drove mostly in silence, listening to the sound of her.  Once she had finally asked

               Am I talking too much?

               God no.  I think you’re talking just the right amount.

He turned and she had a bit of a frown on.

               I think you’re just excited to see me he offered.

               She laughed and then started abuzz again, describing a food (a donut?  He couldn’t remember) that she absolutely craved.  He made a mental note to remind her later so he could find it for her.  He found himself doing that more often…remembering her likes, her unique requests, her subtle hints…and he wrote them on the chalkboard of his mind, hoping he could create a list that would help her feel exceptional.  He felt she deserved that.

The artists market was much bigger than he thought it would be, and the walkways were crowded and parking was a bitch.  But he could sense her growing anticipation, her shifting in her seat, her looking around, the drumming of her hands on the seat.  It was like a kid pulling up to an amusement park.

They ended up at the food area, where the smoke and the smells were visceral…you could almost taste the air.  They had lunch, lemonade and sat at a picnic table by themselves, watching the others.  He wandered over to the cotton candy stand and came back with a big pink ball on a cone, wrapped in plastic.

               Aren’t you having any? She asked

               Nah, I’m good.

               More for me then.

               Yes.  More for you.

She was straddling the bench, facing him, plucking large pieces of the candy and popping them in her mouth, licking her fingers with the sticky sweet sugars.  Her hair slightly moving in a sudden wind, crossing her face, and she pushed it away.

               Why are you looking at me like that? she said.

               I’m just trying to remember this moment.  That’s all.

               Oh.  And what will you remember the most?

He nudged towards her a little bit more, the distance between them dangerously close.  He could see her eyes in full bloom, and he saw a small rivulet of sweat alongside her ear.  He watched her eating the cotton candy and he lifted his hand to her, just beneath her ear and alongside her neck. Her skin was warm.

He kissed her, his lips slowly falling on hers, tasting the sugars and the yield of her mouth against his.  He felt one of her arms on his shoulder.  It was brief, it was concise.  It was a flashbulb.

He pulled away, slightly, their eyes were so very close now.  She had a smile, and one hand held the cone and the other a clump of candy.

               This is what I’ll remember.

In the heat of the afternoon he could hear the music again, he could smell the scents from the cotton candy mixing with the sugars of the funnel cake stand.  He could feel the warm wood of the picnic table, the growing warmth of the sun on his neck.  He watched her finish the candy, popping the last piece in her mouth.  In his mind, in the chalkboard dedicated to her and the things she loved, he rapidly scribbled cotton candy in capital letters with a star next to it.

They got up and joined the thickening crowds.  It looked like a storm might break up the afternoon.  He could only hope.

Narcotic

It begins early in the morning, with the simple application of mascara that highlights the color of her eyes, dark as a forest floor.

It reveals in glimpses and scatters...it is the noise of passing by.  It is the arc of an eyebrow.

It is the stare, it is the burnt-black coals that smolder as she adds tiny dry leaves to a spark she creates and fuels the flame with a smile.

It is an afternoon of her, earth-tones and the scent of a wood-burning fire, beckoning from the other side of a place you had once seen but didn't really notice.  It is an impression, an imprint.  Not quite a tattoo but a bruise.  It is a palpitation.

It is the scent of her from slightly behind her, the quick vampire move to the hollow of her neck, the slight salt taste of her skin behind her ear, where her hairline falls.  It is the warmth of shampoo and potions, mixing in the day with her, cleansing the day with her.

It is the distance between that sometimes caves inward, drawing in slowly, moving in closer, proximity, nearness, adjacency.  The heat radiates like embers...scorched earth from where she walked across me.

It is a quickening.  A tightening.  It is a clenching, a clutching.  It is the collapse of ice in a cocktail.  It is a stutter, a misstep.  It is a skipped beat. It is a disruption.  A distraction.

An eclipse of a sun by a darkening moon.  It is the breath against a candle flame.

Lipstick left on a glass.  Lipstick left on a cheek.  A smear, a smudge.  A scent that arrives and vanishes.  A stain, blood-red and permanent.

It is the blue wind of a Texas evening, starlit and slightly warm, watching the day disassemble itself in the West like the colors of burning fires, oranges and scarlets,  pinks and salmons, matching the colors she lights with her touch.

It is the warmth of a tidal pool, salty, immersing in the greens of a sea, reminiscent of a taste of her skin where the neckline meets the shoulder, like the place where small waves crest on a beach.

It is an invasion, a corruption.  It is a fever, not quite scarlet.  It is a haste.  It is a sting, a tiny bit.  It is an irritation.

It is a pinch.  It is a nip.  It is the nick of teeth in a playful bite.  It is the taste of a kiss.

It is a crush, a weight.  It is a tug, it is a pull.  It is the collapse of two vertebrae, pushed together by a fall.  It is a warm oil with a hand to knead across a back, to relieve, to relax, to revert to a time when bones were perfect.

It is the insert of a needle, it is the introduction of a day with you in it, it is the plunge of the narcotic and it is the coursing through my veins, the sweet drug that it is the daily dose of you.

The Science of Interludes

So…how have you been?

The call had surprised him, at both the hour and the timing…he had just landed at yet another airport, way after midnight, and while he tried to do the math in his head he knew it was late where she was too.

I’m fine…fine.  Just landed in he looked around for a sign, not really remembering where he was and still recovering from the name he had seen appear suddenly on his phone. Detroit, he remembered.

I just landed in Detroit. 

He was walking past empty gates, the sound of a few vacuums muffling down the corridor, there was nobody there waiting and his flight had been relatively empty.  Silver metal gates were pulled taut against the storefronts and he was surprisingly hungry.

I just thought I would give you a quick call…to see how you are.  

He wanted to respond with something about her generosity, but something about the hour, something about the emptiness in the terminal made him reluctant to just jettison the connection.  

Yeah, okay.  I’m fine…I’ve always been fine.

Well then are you still mad at me? 

When was I mad at you?

Well you kind of left abruptly…that lack of a goodbye is kind of a sign.

He paused at the top of the escalators leading down to baggage claim, looking at his reflection in the darkened glass over the tarmac.  He saw himself, and in his façade he saw how she might be envisioning him currently.

You know he started, when I left I actually wasn’t mad.  I was…annoyed.

Annoyed? 

I was annoyed at the implications.  At least what you were implying to me…about me.

I wasn’t really implying…I thought I was just sort of stating the facts.

He looked at his watch, again remembering how late it was.  His hunger had faded and now it was just a low burn.  His head had ripened into a full-on bloom however.

Okay.  Fine, now I’m mad at you.  Happy?

I am not, actually.  I don’t want you to be mad at me.

Well then as somebody who apparently knows me better than myself, how would you like me to feel and just please do us both a favor so that I can be somewhat aware of what you want from me.

I don’t want you to be mad at me.

You said that already, but I asked a different question.

All I know right now is that I don’t want you to be mad.  That’s all I want.

He felt the hand holding the phone drop to his side, and he turned around, almost looking sympathetically for anybody to give him some sort of idea of what he should be doing at that one precise moment.

Look he started, you made it very clear to me that you were in a different place than I.

I’m in a different place then you now.  A lengthy pause.  That’s a joke.

If I’m in a different place then you, and I want you in the same place as me and I can’t get you there, then I am not sure of what emotion you’d prefer me to exhibit.

He wondered if she was lying down in bed, perhaps looking at her fingernail polish.  Perhaps she was looking out a window, her sharp features contrasting even more in a dark reflection. 

 

I think I’m not ready to admit some things she finally said.  It is much easier for me to be in a different place so that…

He closed his eyes and tried to remember a time when she had dropped her mask a little.  He remembered one time when he had driven her to breakfast, early in a morning when they had had a brief chance to meet, and he caught her looking at him intently.  It was just a quick glance and she had broken off the gaze but in that brief moment he felt like she was about to say something.  And she didn’t.  It felt awfully close to this moment in the airport…this interlude between all the non-verbal cues and instances and potentially, finally a truly spoken word.

So that?  He echoed.

He wondered if she was looking at something, or if she had closed her own eyes.  He wondered how she looked asleep.  He remembered how she scrunched up her lips and furrowed her brow when she was thinking hard.  He wondered if she was thinking hard now.  He wondered if her hands were cold, since they usually were, and if the warmth of the phone made her one hand warmer.  He wondered if she was still dressed from the day or was now dressed for bed and then he wondered what she wore to bed.  He wondered if she smelled clean from washing her make up off and now was stark and make-up free…and he wondered what she looked like with such freedom.  He wondered if she could feel the distance between them like cold rows of telephone poles, stretching out across the miles and seemingly never ending.  He wondered if the simplest answer was that she had once been bored and that he had caught her in a moment…and like the day cyclones that crop up intensely and spin up dust and quickly dissipate, he wondered if he had now fallen back to earth.  He wondered this in the few seconds while he waited for her to respond.

So that I don’t make any mistakes I might regret.

He thought about that for a second.

Can I ask you a question, then? He started.

Of course she replied.

Will you answer it?  Or will you avoid it?

That depends.

No…it can’t.  It cannot have any dependencies.  

He was looking out at the tarmac, past the blinking lights that brought the planes in safely.  He knew he was way beyond the chance to bring this conversation around safely and he was resigned to that.

When I see you he began or when I hear you, or when I get something from you in a text or email, it is like a Kirlian Effect…it is-

A what? She interrupted

Uhm, it’s a disturbance…it’s an impact on me that isn’t realized in your absence, but when you reach out to me…well, it glows.  Did you ever see those electrostatic crystal balls and when you put your hand on it the static is visible?

Oh, yeah…I have.

Kirlian effect. 

So I electrocute you? She laughed.

You know, I was trying to be serious. 

I’m sorry.

So, my point is any interaction with you causes this reaction in me.  It doesn’t hurt, it doesn’t cause joy…it just changes…it changes the way I am at the current moment.

Ahh. 

So that it is my reaction to you.  And my wondering is…is that the same for you?

He had gotten to a pretty basic question, somewhat neutral and undefined…but perhaps she felt it was too much exposure and as he waited for her response he began understanding that most excitation happened because there was a positive and negative element…not two positives.  Simple magnetism, where the poles that are apart are the most attracted…not the two similar ones.  

I would have to say there is an effect. She had said it slowly, like a leak…a reluctant escape that snuck out and she formed the words carefully.  But amazingly she continued.   I don’t know if it’s all fancy-named…but yes.  I would have to admit that.  If that’s all I have to admit…right now.

It’s all you have to admit…right now.

There was just a bit of silence and the wave of tiredness once again rose upon him.

Then I am no longer mad at you he stated.

I’m glad. And then she said Goodnight .  And he didn’t want the interruption, he didn’t want to be pushed back into his world that was there before the call, he didn’t want to depart and it was simply because he didn’t know when he would hear from her or when he might see her again.  But he let her go.

Goodnight.