Reprise

It was still thundering when they drifted outside...tucked into each other as they walked almost awkwardly down the hall to the porch.  The rain steamed around them, blurring the light gray, thin white streaks in a torrent.  The afternoon smelled scrubbed, showered, Sunday-best.  It was lightening up a little too, and though the rain volume didn't slacken the sky was whiter and the proximity of the lightning was moving away.

She pulled him down the few stairs and they stepped into the rain.

It was almost stinging, the movement from shelter to exposure...they were both sopped in a few seconds.

Good thing you didn't dry your hair.

He pulled a hand through his hair to keep him from looking like a 10 year old with bangs.  He pushed it straight back and shrugged.

Her hair was clinging to her, making the cheekbones more prominent.  She looked a little as if to shiver.
So he grabbed her and pulled her in, her wet clothes soaking through to his, the tee shirt clinging and useless.  He could feel skin on skin almost, felt the beating heart, the darts of her nipples, the heat of her body temperature against his chest, the only place that seemed warm.  He was awash in the scents of her, the lotions and the soaps.

And then the rain stopped.  Like a turned off hose.  Left only the drippings from the gutters, the slight tremors in the puddles.  The grass was almost reflective, the trees fresh planted.  Like God had hung an air-freshener right beside them.  With that thought he jerked with a little laugh.  She raised her head but then tucked it back down against his collar line.

In the fast colliding hug, there is barely ever the chance to absorb...usually it is a reach, and the arms mix with each other and then there is a connection at the shoulders.  In an embrace, it is a cocoon.  It is a cloister.  It is a hot pocket.  It is the geography of her aligning with the topography of him.  It fits.  And lines up.  And the longer it lasts the more one notices the connection points, the touch points...and in the gradually lightening skies that started to begin to turn a bit blue, he pulled her into him as hard as he could, hoping to draw her into him and as close to him as his body could allow.  To make the monstrous thoughts inside his head of her finally meet the beauty of the physical her in a place and time that was suddenly now.

Borrosa

It was portending to storm in the middle of Texas...the deepening humidity clung to everything...trees, air, the inside of the house which was quiet except for the radio in the back room.

He lay on the bed, jeans and a tee shirt, arms folded behind his back.  This had been her room growing up, and it still carried a bit of childhood in it.  A study in neatness, he noticed.  Everything in its place.

Whatcha doing? she came from around the corner and filled the doorway...her hair still damp from her shower.  I'm not going to dry it she added, pulling on the wet ends...it's too damn hot. Are you okay with ugly hair?

He let out a bit of something like a laugh...It's not ugly hair.  You look good with it wet.

No...I don't.  I think I don't.  She turned and he heard her pad down the hallway.  He slowly pulled himself up, a little reluctant to part from a place where she had laid down a hundred times...maybe a million...left her imprints.  Embedded in a bedframe in a room in the house where she slept under Texas skies and Texas stars.  He felt not like he could fit, but that he could perhaps enjoin.  

She was putting on make up and fussing over herself in the yellow light of the bathroom...the heat in the air was oppressive.

Why do you keep the windows open?  Why not turn on the air? he asked...his hands in his back pockets, leaning against the wall adjacent to the bathroom.  She was a few feet away, eyes in a mirror.  She didn't turn.

Because then I wouldn't be able to hear the storm.

He nodded...knowing she couldn't see it.  Left it alone...somewhere .38 Special was imploring him "to hold on loosely, but don't let go"...the radio would play a song and then the Broadcast Warning would come on, a robotic voice describing Severe Weather.  He noticed the day had become less yellow, and more gray.  Almost brown.

You have a unique beauty he whispered, as he watched her elbows, her one leg and a side of her face that he could see in the doorway.  He knew she wouldn't hear him.  She poked her head around the door, her eyes were made up and she was putting on something for her cheeks. One was done, the other still waiting.

Did you say something?

No...did you hear anything?

I don't know.   Maybe it was the radio.

She had a unique beauty for sure.  A lonely one that she alone possessed.  He sometimes had to help her find it, like a china mask that she had to put on.  She always wore it but sometimes he had to remind her it was on.  A delicate fragile beauty.  Frail as frost.  And when he cupped her face in his hands and did nothing but stare unblinkingly at her, she knew she was at her most vulnerable but infinitely her most beautiful.  In those fine moments when he was her mirror and she was crystalline.  She was legendary.  Her body, her legs, her anywhere with the exception of her eyes didn't really matter.  Like opening a church door and only seeing candles brilliant and bright she neither cared nor concerned with anything except the hot warm light he shined on her in the confines of that space.  Shared.  Brief. Silent.  She didn't need any words to make her feel exceptional.  She could see it.  Sense it.  Believe it. Sure the eyes of a stranger, if caught, might be a respite and an acknowledgment as she passed by.  But it was so superficial that it washed right off of her.  Emerging from a shower she went back into her quiet concerns.  She slipped into her body like old clothes.  But as she painted and applied she kept coming back to a slight feverish moment when they were alone, together, and his quiet study of her.  His gaze was a burning curiosity, a portrait painter's eye.  She remembered all she could remember were his eyes and nothing else.  Not even if it was light or dark.

She had come out of the bathroom and was staring at him, his back to her as he watched the weather through a window.

It's fixing to storm.  Her voice was small. 

He turned, and against the light of the bathroom she was an outline.  Come here.  She walked towards him and when she was close he stepped forward to pull her into him.  Her wet hair grazed his cheek and she smelled of a shampoo.  He could feel the cool of her hair on his neck.  He kissed her hair.

What will we do if we lose electricity? He asked...realizing the boring nature of his question.  He just wanted her to talk, or say something.  Or just do nothing.  Either way he was free to look at her, wet hair, done-up eyes, smooth rouge and undone lips.  He wanted to press his upon them, but he stood there and let her slip from his arms.

We won't.  It's just a thunderstorm.  

Ah.  Well.  And with that the strobe popped and within seconds an avalanche crash enveloped them as thunder roiled the house and pushed the air into a heady wind.  She had jumped just a little, and in that flashbulb he had seen her dark eyes widen.  He reached out to her again.

You don't need to protect me he heard her whisper almost into his shoulder.  The wind was picking up and the house filtered the air through the hallway...it was cool and blue.

I'm not protecting you...I'm protecting me.

From what.  Another bulb.  Another crash.  It sounded like it hit a tree and if that tree was jam-packed with explosives it could not have been any louder.  And the fresh rush of rain started, and you could hear it in sheets.

From you leaving.

The yard had gone gray in the steel wool of an afternoon thunderstorm.  The blinking bits of lightning were now in some syncopation with the thunder...a chaotic and disturbed daylight and the afternoon demolished in bits and pieces as the air scurried to hide from the clamor.

In the hallway, lit up almost in black and white, they stood...he held her in a swaying motion...the radio still on, playing a barely discernible song...she had her arms around him like a slow dance.  He listened to the outside and he listened to her inside, her heart against him in a tiny thunder while outside the Texas sky hurled and screamed like some lost lover searching through a woods, a name hurtled again and again to a world that would never respond. 

It is a joy

It is a joy to find myself with you. To place myself next to you, secure a place beside, align myself along. 

It is a joy to casually pull myself into you, wrap an arm around you and breathe in an air of you. 

Comfort. Familiarity. 

A fire in the hearth when I come home. A scent of a memory. A small and tiny candle that is overcome by a day but burns there nonetheless. 

Perhaps just a tiny fucking fractured splinter in the doorway of a day that is long and complicated and you wouldn't understand even if I told you but you still stick into me as a distraction. 

A single slap of a wiper on the windshield. God I am barely a distraction. Why would you pop into a thought like a burst bulb. A broken light, a bad idea. 

I think it is the curve of you into me. It is a craving. 

And that is all it will ever be. 

I'm a lip-biter

Inhaling. 

Synapse snapping. Hair pulling. Taste buds exploding. Lip biting. I'm a beard against the skin type of guy. A storm in an ear a tongue in a place. A taste of salt, a taste of red licorice. A hot tamale stung mouth. The flick of a bee. The hammer on a thumbnail. The clench of a grip. The collapse of a sigh. The blood flow to a spot. The rise and the raising. Pulsation. Dilation. Eyes blinked close. An electrical spark. A bruise. Did I say that already?  A collision of teeth.  A form factor. A ransom of feelings left for a hostage heart. Small dimes in your purse that you occasionally find and remember the brief bright shiny moments of our connection. Threads broken, shoelaces untied, things left undone. Unsaid. A courageous mouth now quiet. A mouth I used to own with mine. A chance I used to take. A dance I used to fake. Taking an elevator and remembering the way you smelled. Crossing a doorway and remembering the way you felt. Waking and seeing you. Waking and missing you. Waking and plodding along with remnants and cut pieces of a collage of you. And then. Again. A brief and brightened skirmish. A connection. A response. A fold. A tighten. A fever. An anguish. A reminiscence of a time when I could just merely walk over and you were there. And the way you greeted me. And the dull and sudden thud of your departure. As I bit my lip when you walked away. 

Not forever

"Nothing in the world is permanent, and we're foolish when we ask anything to last, but surely we're still more foolish not to take delight in it while we have it.  

If change is of the essence of existence one would have thought it only sensible to make it the premise of our philosophy"

--W. Somerset Maugham, The Razor's Edge

Older than Words

“There is a language older by far and deeper than words. It is the language of bodies, of body on body, wind on snow, rain on trees, wave on stone. It is the language of dream, gesture, symbol, memory. We have forgotten this language. We do not even remember that it exists.”

 —  A Language Older Than Words,Derrick Jensen  

At times

Missing someone isn't about how long it has been since you've seen them or the amount of time since you have talked. It is about that very moment when you find yourself doing something and wishing they were right there at your side. 

Hot Candy Presence

I know when you're in the same room, sensing the proximity  with a shark's sense that detects slight movement in water from miles away. Sometimes it is a scent and perhaps I just missed you, the delicate contrail.  It is like I have ampullae of Lorenzini. 

I know when you are in the same city. Bright colors of you. Easily spotted as you plume like a refinery fire at night. A mirror in a desert. Eyes attracting easily. 

I know when you are in the same county. Like a crop duster gliding over the barns and cuts in the land I sense the edges of you, where you end, where you begin. The sweet property of you, lush, delicate that I can see in one full sweep, one full gaze. 

I know when you are in the same state as me.   An area code popping up from a phone. An accent that colors your tongue. A place I can be relatively quickly but not next door. Never next door. There is distance. Travel. 

I know when you are in the same time zone as me. Hours. At night. In mornings. I am able to calibrate, calendar. Is she awake, is she around. Is she there. A wide path of a wondering clock hand that lets me know we are in synch. 

I know when you are in the same country as me. High above in a flight there are no dark waters. Just brown and vanilla colors of the homeland. We walk on the same earth, we are a bit on the horizon but we are in a straight line gaze. Even if I cannot see you. 

I know when we are on the same hemisphere. The sun pinking your cheeks. 

I know when we are in the same planet because we share a moon. 

I just don't know, however, if we are in the same universe. 

As I have seen the fall of night ignite the fall of stars, the cross paths of satellites and planets, an orange of Venus in a morning. But in the cloudless cold of space I find no equals, no physics, no markers.   But mostly what I feel, at times is that your distance is greater than the most distant system I could even sense. Let alone see. But I know you are out there. Because there is a jealous sun that I will always see. 

Awash

I can remember a rain. I can remember a time. I can remember the suddenness and the randomness of a storm. I can remember the droplets as they slewed off of me onto you. Like a brief tear that is cold and translucent almost exactly the opposite of a tear that is salted and cloudy. 

I can remember the huddle of clouds on a horizon. I can remember a dark in the distance. A black cat in a hallway. I can remember the swell of an energy. Like you walking into a room I remember scenting the change in temperature and odor. Visceral and blooming in my nose and throat. Not sensing. Scenting. As a bee's knees collect pollen you graze against me and I collect bits of you in scents and sounds. 

I hear the brief whispers of raindrops on windows. I feel the storm surges. I hear the anger and disappointment in the sky. Punishing those below. 

I watch the clouds spool and clamor for attentions from the storm. I watch the air darken like your eyes. Troubled. Complex. Unknown. I enjoy the disrupted air. 

And the explosion of an instance. A charge of electricity. A collision. A colliding. 

To return to the subtle chant of rain on a roof. Soothing. Rhythmic. Sonorous. 

A sound I could go to sleep on. A sound I could go to sleep to. Dreaming. Lazily. While you stomp on puddles of my efforts like mere shallow pools that barely reach up to your rain boots. 

I dry off of you in an instant. While you ink me like a tree struck black from a storm. Awash in a memory that smears the wet across a plain still aching from a squall. Just waiting til the next time you come around.