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.