2014

Tonight, amongst all the wishes and toasts, I come back to a simple truth. In this new year I simply want the old you. 

Scene from a Diner

She held the salt shaker deftly in her right hand, tilting it into her left palm until a small 

dusting of salt covered it…she then pinched her fingers on her right hand into the pile, and deftly sprinkled it 

across the food…quickly rubbing her fingers together to brush off every crystal.  He watched her 

fingers manipulate the seasoning, remembering the same way she had deftly reached behind her, as

she faced away from him and released her bra clasp, the fingers expertly releasing the hooks and 

eyes and catching the bra as it fell away from her.  He had remembered this, with the light splintering

in from the diner’s windows, as she seasoned her food in front of him and in his mind he could still 

taste the salt of her.

Tomorrow

Like the first orange iris of an Eastern sun and its corona collision with the blue cold in a morning...like pinks and blues in ribbons to start the day.  Like a cool breeze across mesquite, barren and brittle in a December wind. Like a rivulet of I-35 or maybe I-95 or maybe a dark charcoal line that may lead to you. Like the part of you in your almost-winter eyes that may turn and suddenly alight upon me like the flash of an arrival's headlights. Like the red cold trace of an aircraft speeding away from somebody, or maybe to somebody. Like the flutter of a brief tip of some fingers, cold and red in an afternoon that suddenly steal yours and find them warm. Like a kiss with coffee, like a kiss with wine, like the cold view of the neighbor's lights twinkling while the house is still sleeping. Like a very brief moment, when suddenly things could be, or might be or may be. Possibilities. Like unopened gifts. That may remain so. Or might be ripped apart. The pieces of the last bits of fire, the last parts of the warmth, the last bright and tiny, shiny portions that looked like the sun that very first thing in the morning. That is what I would give you if that is what I could give you.  

Banter

I smelled somebody today and it reminded me of you.

A pause.

What?

You know.  I was walking and I stopped and somebody walked by and they smelled like you and it reminded me.

I'm a little confused on if this is a compliment or an indictment on my hygiene.

He heard her breath come out fast, almost as a tiny laugh.

It was, I guess, a compliment.  I'm near people daily...and they don't remind me of you.

Just the ones that smell.

Just the ones that smell nice.  

I don't think I get close enough...at least to females...to determine if they remind me of you.  He said it as if he was next to her, because sometimes words are physical and best said in proximity.

Well what would that smell like?

He paused again.  I am not sure if I remember.

Well, she said, this person reminded me of you.

And is that reassuring?  or is it disturbing?

Hmmm.  I guess it was just a memory...it was like a comfort.  

A comfort?  Like a blanket?

Well...I don't know about that...it just was a brief scent.

They say the most powerful sense is that of smell.

Is that what they say?

It's what they say.

So why can't you remember if you know how I smell?

Again, he paused.  Because...

Because why?

Because your impact was beyond just one sense.  

One?

Yes.   

It was again the quiet.  Her brain was processing...his was looking up words in a dictionary.  So he started to tell her....

You can never be duplicated.  Nobody could walk by me and cause me to think 'Oh, she reminds me of her, she smells like her, from the back she looks like her...' because there really isn't any way somebody could fit that...or at least come close to that.  At least...it hasn't happened.

More dead air.

Somehow I like that.

Well.  I sometimes wish I could be reminded...because then I could find it when perhaps you're not around.

Reminders aren't too bad.

Reminders suck.  They're alarm clocks.  They awaken memories.  They put a bandage back on a newly opened scab.  

Well when you put it that way.

So tell me...when you smelled the guy and I'm assuming it's a guy...when you smelled him, and he got into your mind and it stirred things up...what did you want to do?

What did I want to do? 

Yeah.

I didn't really want to do anything...it just, I guess as you mentioned, it stirred up things.  

But you didn't want to follow him and grab him.

Grab him?  No.  I just stayed there, but I definitely didn't want to go after him.

So you lingered.

I lingered.

That's too bad.

Why?

I don't know.  Because if scent is the strongest reminding sensation, then I would wonder if the next act is to devour.  

Devour?

Yeah, consume.  Like a pie.

A pie?

A pie.

How did we go from cologne to cooking?

We went from lust to sex.

We did?

Well not actually.  But we went from a disturbance in our mind to a taste to a consumption.  

I don't think we did.

Well otherwise this whole conversation is a lie.

And why is that?

Because you admitted a scent had an impact...that went in through your nose, perhaps was a taste on your tongue but then registered in your brain as pleasing.

I never said pleasing.

You didn't have to.  

I just said it reminded me of you.

Was it a "hey, I could fuck you in this moment" or was it a "hey I could tolerate you on a 3 hour bus ride?"

Wow. 

I know.  Vulgar.  But taste and consumption are primal.  And I guess that's just what I was wondering.

A bit more dead air.

A guy walked by me.  He smelled of a cologne that reminded me of you.  And you've turned this into some sort of Truth or Dare.

He smiled at her conclusion.

When you tell somebody they smell nice it is a benign thing...but when you tell them that somewhere, somehow down the line that another person reminds them of you because of a scent it is a different animal.

It is?

It is.  

And why again?

Because it is now a muscle memory.  Unclaimed.  Unopened and unrealized until something triggers it.

So how does that devolve into the sex thing?

Because it is an attraction.

An attraction?

Yes.  A one time thing then it's that benign thing.  A memory?  A remembrance?  It is an attraction.  An attention.  And that, my friend, is the first awkward step towards intimacy.

It was quiet again...intimate, ironically.  Both just breathing, the connection via miles and ether was crystalline despite the distance.

I like the way you smell...was all she offered.  It doesn't mean anything else.

I hear you...but perhaps...in the future, if so fortunate, let's put all the senses together and see what happens.

Together?

Yeah.  Sight.  Touch.  Scent.  And maybe I will kiss you and taste will join and we'll see what happens.  

What do you expect to happen?

I expect the unexpected.  But I'm willing to see.

Willing to see.  

Yeah.  

Okay.  By the way.  What is that cologne?

Come find me.  I will show you.

Scarlet

Bleed into me...bleed into my thoughts, blend into my mind.  Bleed into my eyes, disguised as tears, bleed into my day, disguised as daylight.  Bleed into my evening, a cloak around the sun, bleed into darkness as a cloud scuttles across a star.

Bleed into me the hot pulse of blood, the living you...a reminder.  Bleed into me your fragrance, bleed into me your distance.

Bleed into me the spiraling memory, when you and I were about to kiss, when you and I were so close I could see the pulse in your neck, the dilation in your eyes...our breath mingling, our lips just centimeters apart and our blood boiling inside of us...hot of us, hot for us...when distance was just a pinprick away.

Now just a papercut, a nuisance...perhaps not even drawing blood, perhaps devoid of the heated fluid that swam strangely, like a fever...a pox, a hotflash...the pooling of warmth in cheeks, in a flush, and in the parts of us we don't talk about in public.

When you and I were so tantalizingly close, when there was a roar in our ears, when our eyes were slowly closing preemptively and in those fading moments I could almost hear your heartbeat, almost hear its echo.

I could sense the scarlet in you, see the scarlet in you. 

In these winter skies, or almost-winter skies, in the grays and in the whites, in the plumes of fogs and exhaust pipes, there is such an absence of the reds of you...the scarlets of you, blood-signs, life-lines.  Blood lines.  Such a contrast it could be, almost as a moon against a sky.  But a moon is bloodless, lifeless...it is a cold veneer, despite its beauty.

You have traded with that moon, and remain cold in my sky, frozen in my mind...a light not from you but from some other sun.  Not a blood line, not a lifeline.  A reminder.  A pale bone, a pale shine, that still remains beautiful...but empty...drained.

And I search it, I explore it, daring it in the night sky to reveal just a pulse, reveal just a hint.  Something to show me that it is alive, something to indicate the travel of blood from a vein to a heart, something to reveal a tiny smoldering. 

Something, in the grays and in the whites, that it is not quite dead, that it is not quite gone.  Something, perhaps just any thing, that appears and it might be no bigger than a pinprick.

But in that tear-shaped drop I feel the pulse of you, albeit distant, but alive, and beckoning, and in its rhythm I count the sequence of time that pulls me back into the place when our eyelashes were touching, our lips were almost and in between us our blood slowly boiled just beneath the surface.

Brown

It is the color you might have thought boring. It is the color that I have found contoured, nuanced, subtle, riveting. 

Like dark furrows scratched into my own eyes, your tannins were clay in my hands, dirt in my fingers, stains on my jeans. The scorch of the earth in a smudge against me. 

There are no brown sunsets. There are no browns in rainbows. No brown in storms and no brown in hail. 

But there are storms in your eyes, hail in your stares, light in your gaze, if seen at the right angle. 

The brown suns in your eyes have drawn me into their orbit for so long. Like bourbons melting liquid gold in a glass and like ice coloring riverbeds. Your browns have temperature and texture, tempest and tenure, and they unveil in an unblinking stare when they burn coal black in an evening. 

Your browns are the golds that I have sifted in all your gazes and they are the remains of a color that I alone can simply treasure. Nuggets at the bottom of an effort where I have dipped into the water of you and swirled til I have left only your stare and its priceless image. 

That I can simply recall when I choose to clench my eyes shut into a black that reveals your brown. 

Incendiary

I didn't know you smoked. 

Pause. A glance. Askew. 

I rarely do. 

I'm not judging. Just making a comment. 

There is that move, the female form as it inhales the lit cigarette, the embers burnishing bright drawn by the inflow of oxygen as her lip purses around it, the slight narrowing of the nostrils and the movement of her head to slightly turn away, the mouth slightly askew to blow the gray smoke down and out so not to cloud the distance. It is like a dance move. 

And the look after. Like an annoyance. A "what now" kinda gaze. 

But to me it reminds me of an old and interesting saying. Because I have always been somewhat partial to a kiss in the middle of a cigarette. The depth of it, a different kind of sense. A more physical connection for some mad reason. 

The saying:  I feel sorry for anybody who kisses me in the future because all they will taste is you. 

Disbelief

I was told of the non-existence of Santa Claus in the clear sunny afternoon in our kitchen in San Diego, a day when the formica counter was green and yellow light filtered through the gauzy kitchen drapes.

I was 10.  And I guess my mom had had "just about enough of this nonsense" so she told me a true story that in its truthfulness ensured I had been living a lie for quite some time.

You see the story went something like this...when I was say 4 or maybe 5 I was awakened in the pre-dawn hours of central California...where my grandparents lived, a valley city that brought such deep fog in the winter.  It was cool, almost cold and if you looked past their house in the distance you could just make out the mountains and in some cases the winter snows.  The valley was flatlands, fertile, rich with raisins and nectarines and we pulled and plucked these fruits to stave off the boredom of spending yet another day there.   Christmas was a 3 day affair...Christmas Eve at my paternal grandparents, Christmas day at my maternal grandparents and then the five hour drive home with my younger sister to get to the real presents. 

Looking back, I realize the heaven of having such family in proximity, the triad of the bloodlines, the ability to drive in minutes to see the family tree.  At the time though I'm certain I felt it was a special hell, particularly since the good gifts were a day-trip away back at our home in San Diego.  (Although I do take a special pride in the time my maternal Grandfather asked me what I wanted and I told him the Kiss Destroyer album...this was a few years later of course, '76, and the thought of that dear old man shuffling through music stores seeking a Kiss album continues to make me smile.  Also the fact that my Grandmother had a compact record player that looked like a suitcase with a small speaker and it became the machine that played that Kiss album haunts me to this day...)

I digress...but such is the taffy pull of Christmas memories, the collision of times when there were chimney fires because my uncle decided to stuff all the wrappings up the fireplace and the subtle sweet moments when an evening grew quiet in the comfort of each other...

So anyways. 

I was awakened that early morn, the evening still heavy on the land, the fog a gray blanket and really in the darkened neighborhood there was nothing to see.  It was that one TV channel that is always on the blink, nothing but cable snow.

But then I heard it, probably because about 15 of my Mexican relatives kept saying "can you hear it" but against their din I heard the slightest of high key notes of a bell.  And it was in the distance...and we had walked onto the porch of the house that my Grandfather had built...a reference I was to make 85 years later when I delivered his eulogy about a family that was hand-built by him...and as I walked the porchline I did hear something...I did hear what sounded like a bell.

Against the backdrop of the night I could see the road, tar black and moving into the distance, and the fog hovering slightly above it...and the bell seemed to be getting closer.  I could feel the crush of the family behind me, the cold of the night and as I looked I swear I saw a red light beacon coming down the road.

There were no cars, no streetlights.  No stars.  There was an evening, quiet as a church, enveloped in fog, the cusp of a Christmas and I was hearing a bell and seeing a red light moving towards me.

The rest of the story gets a little fuzzy.  Lots of hands imploring me to go back to bed, go back to sleep...my grandmother:  "Timmy, you need to be asleep when Santa comes."

Okay.  Like anybody is going to sleep after this event.

Needless to say, I stamped that memory in my mind like a coin-maker's strike...an indent upon my heart, a flashbulb in my brain, and when one of my neophyte elementary school friends laughed about Santa and said that he didn't believe anymore I just stayed silent.

Because I knew.  Because I had seen.  With my own eyes.  Awakened in the sweet twilight like the man in the book, when light was dim and the rest of the world was asleep...I had had my moment and I knew what I saw.

7 years old, 8 years old...didn't matter.  My smugness was the truth. 

9 years old.  10.  I was debating teenagers on the existence of something that they hadn't seen.

"But I'm telling you what I saw"

In that kitchen, there on Belle Glade Avenue, a corner house across from Lake Murray where I grew up playing baseball and had a pool and my parents had parties and we were happy and got our first dog...in that kitchen my mom broke the news to me like she had dropped an egg.  Oops.  Sorry.  Let's clean that up.

When she wanted to bring up a serious subject she called me "Tim". 

Today, 40 years later, she still calls me "Timmy".

I remember turning to her...we had been cooking or helping or baking or something.  But I remember her height above me, and I remember the matter of fact way she admitted the truth.

"Tim, that was your Uncle Steve.  He had borrowed your Uncle Benny's army flashlight with the red lens.  You really need to stop telling people that you believe in Santa Claus because you saw him."

Bam.  Needle skips off the record.  An icicle falls and shatters. 

It wasn't a collapse.  It was just the realization that something fragile but treasured can break so easily.  Can break into a place where it just cannot be put together again.   Faith dissipates, but faith to a child is not the same.  Trust is just a hope.  A memory is ideally written in ink but sometimes it is written in pencil.

I absorbed the story, but I also held onto a piece of it...like the way you clipped out an article from a magazine.  You ripped out a memory to preserve.  You decided on your own conclusions.

Many years and a couple of kids later I still can see that twilight gray and the single penetrating red.  I can still hear my family behind me, wondering at the moment that was happening...many of those on that porch night have gone...or have changed...

But to me, Christmas is that moment, when things stopped for a second, and all the things that they had told me could happen did happen...and I was there with them when it did.

Say Something...

There's only so many ways to describe the traverse of taillights...

Only a few ways to describe colors at a time of an evening when the colors rinse the sky in their altering shades...

So many limited ways to describe...to define, to literally run out of words without being redundant.  Without being repetitive.  Without waste.

Without soon tiring.  Without soon just giving up.  Without giving in.

Something like this....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iC8tP9Oo52Y

Protocol

 Why are you being so fucking polite?

She had asked the question in an afternoon when yellow haze filtered into the restaurant, really the bar area, early enough so that there were few companions but late enough to ensure the Fall sun fell almost horizontal through the windows.  He had taken a draw from the big pilsner glass in front of him.

Am I?  

Yes.  And I don't like it.  

This amused him a bit.

How would you like me to be, then?  He looked at her, the slash of sun like a mask across her and her eyes were narrowed.  She didn't look anything except annoyed.

I want you to be real...I want you to share with me and expose to me what it is you're really thinking.  I want the good and the bad.

That sounds awfully like a wedding vow, he said smirking.  Her annoyance ticked up just a bit more.

I'm being serious...these one word answers and generic responses are bullshit.

He turned to face her, and his knees aligned with hers.  He moved his slightly so their legs alternated, almost like intertwined fingers....hers, his, hers, his.

You forget, he said.

Forget what?

He inhaled, and let out a bit of effort.  She was still looking at him, eyes a little wider signalling expected response.

I tried that before.  Her eyes opened slightly.  And it got me nowhere with you.  Her face softened.  The contours and angles smoothed a bit...her whatever she felt (anger, impatience) morphed into knowledge.  She dropped her eyes...and he felt her legs tighten slightly against his.

Okay.  Okay, fair.

So please don't ask me to do it again.

She looked up again.  I hate your politeness.  I hate that facade.

You built those bricks.  You're initials are stamped on each one.

Her features tightened again, taut.  He felt the slight anger in a way you feel opening an oven door.  Just there for a moment.  She turned her legs and they escaped the grasp of his, he let her go and picked up his beer.

Outside the wind had picked up a bit and the gray hairs of an evening poked through the veil of blue as the sun quietly moved past the horizon.  They had walked to the parking garage and it was concrete and steel, and in the ante room near the elevator they had stopped.

Why did you come? She asked.

Why turn down a chance to see you.

But if you're not going to say anything then why bother?  

He took a slight step towards her, and with his hand he slid it just along her jawline so that his thumb was on her cheek and the rest cupped her face.

Because I cannot get you off me.  I cannot wash you away.  I cannot paint over you, cannot simply whitewash you from me.  It's not just stupid words, stupid sentences, it is like a disease, an infection...an inflammation.  It is a sore, a bruise.  It is not enough...not even close to being clearly ever enough, to describe, to define, to convince you of what it is.  You'll depart here, you'll leave and I'll remain but you will still cling.  A least to me.  And no words will bring you back, no paragraph will entice you.  So just let me politely wear you, in private, where nobody else knows that you are inside of me.  Except you.  Now.

He let go off her face and took a step back.  And that's why I'm so fucking polite.  Because I risk sharing shit like that...so you can be...bemused...amused...whatever.

 And he remembered when he was walking away, when the wind had picked up and hurried him away from her like a bundle of dead leaves, walking in the same direction as nightfall with streetlamps and car
lights merely yellow colors, how politely she had looked back at him, and had politely refrained from a word.

Porn

Kiss. Catch. Caress. Clutch. 

Fold. Envelope. Hand. Fingers. Entwined. Wine in a glass, wine taste on a tongue. 

Slide slightly, move lightly, there. That is it. 

Bite. Nip. Tear into me like a ravishing. Bleed if only inside. While blood rushes to another part. 

Teeth collide. Violence. 

Whisper. Wait. 

Wait. Wait for me. 

Meld. Conform. Blow glass in heat and expand to art. Wield. Weld. Warm. 

Hand in hair, mouth on mouth. 

Slight sweat. Slip. Scalp. Wipe away the damp. Salt. Salt of you. Brine on the lips. 

A sudden clench. An angle perfected. 

Slow. Slowly. Slowing. 

Slow but stay there. 

Stay there. There 

There 

A place that releases a name. My name. Whispered. 

Collapse. Crumple. Coalesce. 

Find me in your arms. Find you in mine. 

Skin sticking, skin staying. 

Skin arcing in the rhythmic thump of a fast staying heartbeat. 

Air cooling, quieting. A sudden goose-bump moment. 

Slight brush of lips. Softer now. Slower. Softer. Lighter. Laughter. Lingering. Longing. Lounging. Lightly. Lightly. 

The reverse C of you into me. The drape of an arm. The entanglement. Where one ends, where one begins.

 Conjoined. Enjoyed. Indulged. 

1441

Create for me...make time for me...

In a day with 1, 440 minutes what exists in the in-between?  Could I conquer a minute of your time?  

I remember when I would anticipate your arrival, the anticipation of your existence, the wave of you crushing upon the dead sand of me, to awaken, to enliven, to greet me...and in the held-breath of what I'm sure were minutes but were most likely moments I could feel the anticipation.  I could wait for you.  I couldn't wait for you.

Now I'm a dead leaf on the windshield.  Flicked, annoyed.  

I think of when time was not sand, not a tick of a clock, but an environment.  A you and an I when there was nothing monitoring, nothing counting....it was a breath of me into you, and an inhalation of you into me.  

I think of the minutes you spend getting beautiful...to a world that may respond, maybe not.  I think of the minutes that you care getting ready.  I have already lived those.  I have already mentioned that perhaps you are too striking for the rest of us, for the rest of them.

I don't pretend of your beauty.  I remind you of it.  I don't say that it works.  I say that it stays.  I don't pretend.  I remind.  Because I put the truth in a moment, I cram the gorgeous in a minute.  A minute that doesn't exist.  I am not in your day...and maybe I'm not in your night.

Rather, I'm in that extra moment...that in-between time.  I'm that 1, 441st minute that exists only in your mind...when and where I can exist so that you remember how beautiful I believe you are...and perhaps for a minute...a moment...you believe as well.

Sotto Voce

Maybe there are times when I'd rather just call your phone, hope that it rings the maximum amount of times and then click to the sound of your voicemail. 

To hear your voice like you'd greet a stranger. Like you'd greet an every man. 

Unenthusiastic. Untouched. 

Like going back in time when I couldn't cause a flutter, couldn't cause a hitch. 

I press my voice against a mouthpiece to convey a message, convey a word. An adjective. A verb. So very different against an ear. 

A word said in the dark is so ultimately dense that it falls upon you like a spider web, sticky, touching upon you. 

A word left in the box of a voicemail is mechanical. A timeframe. Disembodied. 

Disembodied. 

I'd so much rather hear your voice in the black then hear a recording of your voice out of the blue. At a point when I might call. 

Just to hear the sugar of your voice that once sweetened my day. 

Sameness

Evening

Click.

The door shuts behind me.  It is a metallic noise, a slot filled with a metal male into a metal female. Their connection a barely audible sound.

A sun hides behind trees, low in the West, hide and seek to an afternoon that is tired of chasing it.  It is the yellowing of a Kodak evening, edges curling like an old photo, a patina sheen to a day that was filled with numbers and voices, key strokes and conversations, the bane of a chore, the hamster-wheel going around in a cage.

Click.

The noise that I heard when you shut the door, a departure, a removal.  A jettison.  You, then not you.  Not even a pair of footsteps echoing to at least signal a movement away.  Just a sound, a metallic click that is not slammed in anger or frustration but rather of civility.  Business-like.  Hello, I'm done with you, Goodbye.

Click.

The classic toy view-master, advancing the picture scenes in colors across a plastic lens.  Next.  You and Me.  Next.  You without.  Next.  Me.  Next...a catch in the gears or something.  Mechanical.  It just stopped working.  It just stopped fucking working.

Click.

A fast iPhone photo.  A shared text.  A sent message.

Click.

A silence.

Click.

The aperture of the day is closing, the co-mingling of colors is becoming rapidly a darkened ink.  With each beat of a blink the day is just basically heading down a disposal, mauled together and blackening.  It has no rhythm, no courage.  No colors really.  Like a child spilling glass jars of paint in a single space, just a somewhat lengthy amount of work to what the day will end like, which is just a blackness.  A horizon trimmed with a burnt edge, but losing it quickly, a blink, then black.

Click.

The noise of a Sharpee as it crosses out another day.

Click.

The sound a file makes when removed from a drawer, placed on a desk and opened.  It is a memory jogged.  It is you thinking about it in the middle of the day, it is an unpleasant invasion, not anticipated and unwelcome.  It is the click of the gears in your mind, the cold hard machinery of a memory that you want rusted and chained and unoiled and unkempt and ossified and archaic and untouched and unmoved and unearthed and unveiled and uncomfortable and unseen, unknown, unavailable....

But every now and again, like a fast last bit of an orange sky immolating against itself before retreating completely into black...you hear a door shut...in your mind...of an escaped memory that has left whatever prison you created and is now roaming around for you to suddenly attempt to catch it...and with it, catch a glimpse of me.

Zydeco

So they happened to stumble upon the place, like many of their diversions, by merely happening upon it. Music spilled out in boisterous fumes, loud, clanky, but thumping...compelling...you could tell that the band knew what it was doing and by the surge of people they realized that as well.

She had sort of grabbed his hand in a spontaneous gesture...but in his mind he knew it might have been planned.  She pulled him towards the steps leading up to the place...it was more of a shack house...called Sammy T's...like an old gas station that had wooden steps and a broad porch lit with neon.  Inside the blackened doorway he could glimpse the strings of white Christmas lights that garnished the room.  The swell of people was pretty strong...and in the humid air they glistened.

Zydeco music is a cultural heartbeat...the rhythm of Cajun influence into traditional blues, punctuated by an accordion, a washboard and a drum.  Maybe a great violin, maybe a keyboard.  But the beat is from a heart in full frenzy, almost erotic, that pulls the couples together in an embrace.  They watched the people dancing, the music loud, louder than an alarm, the room peppered with movement and faint white light from the bulbs.

He had quickly whispered as best he could that he was going to grab them a drink, and when he drew her in close, with her hair and her ear brushing up against him he smelled her.  It was like smelling a color, and he paused slightly, breathing her in, hoping she wouldn't pull away.  She didn't.

He returned with 2 iced down beers, sweating in his hands as the ice chips sloughed off, and he handed her one.  She clinked the bottle to his and sucked down a hefty swig as he watched.  Her pursed lips around the bottle, her throat moving in the gulps...he watched her and when she finished her eyes were smiling and she looked at him briefly.  For some god only knows reason he kissed her...unplanned, unforetold.  He grabbed her against the noise of the music, the thud of the drumbeat and the humidity of the crowd.  Her lips were still cold from the beer but there was a warmth behind it, a heat inside it, and he lingered upon her like a bead of sweat, lightly, delicately, just touching faintly.  It was he that broke it off and drew back.  She still had the smiling eyes.  But she seemed a little out of breath.  At least that is what he thought.

They watched the crowd, they watched the dancers.  They drank beers as the night grew long.  The shack house bounced with its wooden floors and its sheen of dark musicians.  They tried dancing to a few songs, mixing in a somewhat Texas 2 step with a bit of original moves...he caught her laughing as they tried to keep up with the beat, the band urging them on, glancing into strangers as they moved on the dance floor.  The humidity was a wrap, and they grew sweaty and wet-warm as the music kept playing.

Finally the band took a break.  It was still, like a swamp night, and the silence was imperfect because their ears were still ringing.  Conversations were now heard, and the lights seemed to brighten up just a bit.  It was like sprinting and then suddenly stopping to talk.

And then, in a brief moment, the overhead speakers came on...the owner decided to play some background music, and in the distractions of the band going off-stage and people mingling or refreshing drinks, he heard the first few sounds of a song.

It was a song he recognized, and he recognized how incongruently it sounded...it was Matchbox 20's "Back 2 Good"...and it was beginning to play in this darkened room filled with strangers and bar keeps and sounds of drinks being served, poured, glasses clinking, being set on coasters...

And he reached for her hand, and pulled slightly.  She followed, a little bit of a slow start and they found themselves in the middle of the floor...and he put his arms around her and slowly started dancing.  Not a fast dance, not a slow dance...just a dance to go with the simple 4:4 rhythm of the song...unfortunately the song starts slow and then advances...gets a little faster, but the tepid beat is fairly consistent.

In the ending portion of the song it slows again.  And he felt her against him, warm and wet, sweating around the back of her head, and he felt conjoined.  He felt she was stuck on him.

The music stopped and nothing replaced it.  She kind of swayed a little bit, like the music was still playing.  He pulled her tight in one last clench to let her know the dance was ending and then felt the release of her arms against him.

When he looked at her the eyes were still smiling.

Outside a storm broke and he could hear the rain on the roof and in the street.  Felt the cool breeze flush into the room and some near the door moved closer to the stage.

He couldn't wait for the band to start up again.

Not Mine, Part II

"Somebody asked me if I knew you...

...a million memories flashed through my mind...

....but I just smiled....

...and said...

... I used to."

Indelible

I saw this tattoo, this image and it struck me.  The irony of a water color tattoo, the scribbled image of beauty, the contrast against the pale skin.   I loved it. I loved coloring outside the lines. I love the remarkable study of an arm discolored. I love the idea of questioning "why did you choose this?"

I'm coming to realize that I am more of an artist than anything else. Your portrait hangs in the galleries of my mind. And yet these are not posed shots or serious studies. These are snippets. Cropped shots. They are a Kodak moment in my permanent ink mind. Irreversible.  Cave man drawings to last a millennium. To be studied by men way smarter than I. But I will always recall the remarkable beauty of you, the clash of colors of you and the ink spot unnamed crayons of you that alit upon me like an unleashed tattooist needle that carved into me a scenery I so gladly wore. And if...if I had to simply and indelibly describe it to a sketch artist or to a stranger, I think your palette stained upon me in such gorgeous visage would look faintly, barely and perhaps exactly like this photo above. Brilliant. Incandescent. Bold. Scribbled. Unmatched. Unequaled. Irreverent. Irreplaceable. Exotic. Enticing. Visceral. Violating. Trailing off in the end, the way you colored me in such brights and bruises only to spill away, trickle away, leaving a slightly darkened trail in your retreat from the kaleidoscope that you created.  Staining me in your colors that I wore in your absence. 

In A Place About the size of a Confessional--An Opera

Overture--

To anoint is to pour or smear with perfumed oil, milk, water, melted butter or other substances, a process employed ritually by many religions. People and things are anointed to symbolize the introduction of a sacramental or divine influence, a holy emanation, spirit, and power---Christian Worship Practices Definition

Aria--

In the steam he anointed her…a clear bottle of L’Occitane Almond Moisturizing Shower oil…liberally used.  He glazed her skin like the way he felt her eyes glazed him in a gaze.  Not perfect, but rather haltingly…humanly.  Unfamiliar…the way a discovery is made and shared.  Exploring.  Eyes held tight in a gaze but every once in awhile he strayed and let his lens float across her body in a delicious absorption of her…her skin…her colors…her pinks and her pales…and then back to her eyes.

A muted Finale--

In the end, in his briefest memory, he likened it to this:

 Do you remember the times when you saw the horizon glaze into gray, knowing a storm was a’coming?  Do you remember the reluctance in leaving the humid static of the air, and then going out in the rain when it came?

Do you know when a thunderstorm has collapsed over you, darkening the house, tormenting the outdoors, and in a cool and quiet room you can see the shapes and outlines by the flickering light of a scentless candle? 

 

And if you held the heated glass of that candle in your hand…a candle that had been winking for minutes, maybe an hour, shedding sweet wax into a liquid that pooled at the top, a lighter color than below, and if you tilted it the liquid would ebb and flow…

And if you were to blow out the flame in a gray plume and let the warmth radiate through your hands as you stood still in the blackening darkness, the outside world plundering in lightning and thunder, noise and wind breathing warm against the windows and shaking loose in flinging branches and leaves, the heated glass now warming beyond your hands, along your arms and shoulders, and the hail now clamoring and the storm getting more violent, more savage…

…and just as you think the warmth of the candle can cause no further heat you let your finger just barely touch inside the glass, and touch the wax that  is just now beginning to  harden…warmth emanating and holding a hint of heat below… and you plunge into the thin layer, it penetrates into the below and you feel a  hot wet molten warmth that is unlike any heat you have ever known…and it pools against  you, enveloping, sticking to you, heating, hastening, gripping, clutching…and it warms you as you listen to the afternoon moan outside as it shudders and collapses, giving in, giving up…exhausted and wrung from a storm that has raged on the outside…and on the inside.

That is what he remembered…