Wrapped in my Memory (Song)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLnCBxGo6Rg



It couldn't have happened


To a better man

It couldn't have been any

Different than it was



And you're wrapped in my memory like chains

For I say that the flowers will always be there in my heart

Like an old fashioned movie with all of you playing the parts



Wonder if I'll never

be so unafraid

To walk to the river

And turn around again



For I say that the flowers will always be there in my heart

Like an old fashioned movie and I never forget your part

I never forget your part



Standing on that stage

tell us what you've been feeling

Before you started to fade

You gave me something to believe in

And that the best thing

That anyone can give



And you're wrapped in my memory like chains (Yeah you're only a memory now)

And you're wrapped in my memory like chains (Yeah you're only a memory now)

And you're wrapped in my memory like chains (Yeah you're only a memory now)



And I can't wait until we see each other again

And I can't wait until we see each other again

And I can't wait until we see each other again

And you're wrapped in my memory like rolled gold

What is Not to Remember

It is so hard to forget pain, but it is even harder to remember sweetness. 

We have no scar to show for happiness.  We learn so little from peace.

Bourbon...after hours

She had come home in an evening, when the sun had long set and it had left its skidmarks across the sky and the grays beneath the trees were starting to blink with the sudden staccato of fireflies.  It was humid, a dead air feel but it felt like the prefix to a storm and she welcomed that knowledge like the calendaring of a dream where she could wake up to a thunder.  She was worn thin, rubbed raw by a day that had collapsed around her like thorns and she had finally shoved her way through.  She felt ugly, raw and starved.  

She saw a lone burn of a candle on the porch, a tea-light.  A lighthouse.  The front door was open, spilling a bit of yellow in a rectangle against the front of the house.  She heard the dark murmur of crickets signalling their start of the evening.  

She was halfway to the house when she saw the dark outline.

Can I buy you a drink? 

He was in the dark, a shape, meshed against the house, sitting in a chair and waiting for her.  She briefly wondered if the interaction was coincidence but then realized the candle gave it away.  He had been waiting for her.

She moved forward, the light from the house spilling more onto her gaze and she sensed him now, like a warm spot in a room, a shaft of sun through a window in an afternoon.  But in this dark humid air it felt more like a presence...and a gravitational pull to his orbit.  

She had once pulled him into hers.  She knew how it felt.  Being on the other side.  Now, at least for now, she felt the pull of him.  The undertow.  She wasn't sure if she liked it either.  Had preferred to be the dark matter tugging him into her, or at least towards her.  In this reversal she felt her feet slipping and she did what she usually did...fled...or did nothing.

But now, in a lawnscape with perhaps a storm brewing far away and the weight of a day piling onto her shoulder blades and the beginning of a headache she stopped really thinking for a second.

Of course.  What are we having?

She heard and across the lawn almost felt the ice cubes rolling in the glass, the delicious clink.  The crystal against ice crystal.  She thought she saw him lean forward and maybe, just maybe pour something.

It's just Woodford Reserve.  And yeah, it's on the rocks.  But it is quite nice.

She paused.  How many have you had already?

A short laugh.  Now is not the time for questions.  Come.  Sit a spell.  That almost sounds Texan.  Or southern.  Or hospitable.

She smiled a fast smile and walked up the steps.  He remained seated and she dropped her stuff on the porch.  She saw in the faint light his hand reaching up to hers with something glinting.  She reached out, took the cool glass and took a sip.  It was caramel melting on her tongue.

Ahh, we forgot to toast he said.  She could see his glass in the air.

She allowed the glass to fold and fall into a plane that reached out to his, clinked it once.  

There she said.

To us he said.  They both took a sip.  

I don't want to hear about your day he said.  I just want you to listen to this evening, and perhaps in small paint layers you will peel off all of the past 8 hours---

12 hours

Fine, past 12 hours and just spend a few moments with me.  Not minutes.  Not hours.  But just a few with me.

She had sat in the wicker rocker and heard him.  She felt the glow in her throat as the bourbon cascaded down and she lost track of the headache and the shoulders and the feet and the back and she focused solely on the grainy view of an evening darkening before her.

She heard the sounds, and felt the tension of the air and the approaching clouds and she heard the crickets signalling, the evening tightening its flaps for a storm.  She forgot about a computer, a phone.  She watched a brief gust of a tree bend slightly.  She saw the flicker of the flame in the tiny candle.  She felt a bit of tension drain from her like a slow ebb tide.  She saw the drain of a blister.  She felt the release of a band tight around a wrist.  She formed into the chair.

More she said, holding her glass to him.

Silently he poured her another few fingers.  She watched as he turned, plucked some ice from a bucket and plopped it into her glass.

The evening grew another shade deeper, and was really losing light.  It was still.  Dead man still.

This is nice.  He said as he drained his glass, the ice swirling around a bit.

The evening turned mottled black and the humidity sucked the coolness out of the air and spat it back in warm fumes.  

Inside each of them the warmth from a drink spread outwardly and loomed in their heads, numbing the sharp points and mellowing the rest.

It was the kind of evening you had hoped for, but so rarely got.

agreed was all she said.  But to him it was a victory

Intrusion

I am not there in the morning. 

I am not there in the awakening, the blurry move towards tile and plumbing and the cold hand turning a dial to warm. 

I am not there to hand you soap. A lotion. A lather. A razor pulled cautiously across skin. Across a thigh. 

I am not there in the lathering. In the squeezing of remnants of a conditioner bottle into a palm. Into an oil that may moisturize. The scents looming in a slight fog. 

I don't see towels. I don't see the toweling and I'm not there to give you two because you need one for your hair.  

I'm not there for the slip into panties or thongs and bras and camisoles. I'm not there for the naked and the nude. 

I'm not there to plug in a hair dryer. I'm not there to pull open a drawer and look for mascara. Look for blush. Look for eyeliner. Look for mousse, gel or spray. I'm not there to worry a stray hair, worry a lone eyebrow. I'm not there to curiously gaze. 

But what if I was there?  What if I could see you assemble yourself in a morning?  

I honestly think you'd be stopped at the towel. Before you got prepared. At your skin-glistening vulnerability. At your most natural look. 

Au natural. 

And likely your most beautiful. In the stark naked moments of my invasion. My intrusion.  And my hope that all you would see, in the humid fog of a room, would be my eyes catching yours like a mirror catches steam...clinging, beading and holding onto the sweet visage of your most perfect and reflective gaze back into mine. 

An Evening You could Wear So Well

I could steal you for an evening, steal you for an instance.   Breathe in a summer air just days before the solstice. 

I could inhale you like a hemlock, a wormwood, an enchanting forbidden taste that is exquisitely yours and yours alone. 

I would place my hand in the small of your back and let it drift downwards.   Maybe just barely touch lace. 

I would buy you a linen dress to barely hold your outline. 

I would buy you Italian ice that I would taste on your tongue. 

I would kiss you on a street corner where strangers would gasp at the audacity. I would motherfucking kiss and I would weaken knees. 

And then we would walk some ways further and I would notice a moon and some neon and taillights of cabs and I would hear horns and airplanes and the fallings of stars and in the pink and blue hues of an evening I believe I would turn to you, and murmur to you that you were more gorgeous than this...and I would point to an evening gussied up in its colors and you would know it to be true. Because I had said so. 

Steps and Sips

In a few moments I will retreat. 

Will you wait for me or will you sleep?  

Will I find the curve of covers or your open arms?

Either way I get to nestle. Either way I get to release. 

Either way I find you beside me and calming. Easing. Massaging an evening. 

I waltz in and hear music from a dance and leave you to decide if you will waltz with me. 

Or maybe you will merely sleep. 

No worries. 

Either way I am beside you. 

Violence

I watch the violence of these fights. And I guess I wonder at your definition of surrender

Maybe some day you'll be on the receiving end.   You haven't done so for me but man is it interesting.  

Tiny Lovers

Let us be...tiny lovers. 

Let us make mischief. Let us spoil the day with quick glances. Knowing looks. A brief and tiny brush against each other. 

Let us make mayhem. Let the energy of a salacious thought bruise the background, deflect and hit you square in the teeth. 

Let you ask me for a tee shirt, that I have  worn in a day, so you can wear me at night with my scents and my presence upon you as you strip bare to wear nothing but my cotton. 

Let us make small talk. If we happen to meet and with others nearby. Let me drop a word that will transport us immediately in our minds so that we know exactly what we said and we know exactly what was heard. And more importantly what was intended. 

Let us make merry. In brief quiet moments, separated by millimeters, let us be mirrors. Let us be breath upon breath. 

Let us make hearts race. Let us let blood rise. Let us find quiet comfort in a nod. A glance. 

Let us let tiny indications of a much larger  sense leak through and let us know in the tiniest of gestures the massive quantum weight of a feeling that once started small that has now swollen into a gargantuan force that I hide behind my blinks. 

Let us be tiny lovers. And let us crave large times together. 

In a day, or maybe even an evening

It is pretty simple and elegantly as instantaneously sweet. 

The slight drip of a thought of you slides slowly down my tired mind. It inexorably pools, warms and taints my thoughts and stains them with you. 

The honey of a day, the honey in a night. You add without knowing a sweetness to the blandness of a day. I can still taste you in my mind. 

Watercolors

And so I started...

Remembering a reflection of you, softened by time, ripened by memory.  In the aisles of my reminiscence I remember the pictures of you like so many colors.  

Watercolors.

Soft, and yielding.  Pliable, like a warm lip upon a warmer lip.  The curves of you...soft edges.

You curse in the mirror and spit at reflections...I find the unveiled you to be...in its most poignant memories, the most recently acquired and preferred taste of mine.

You believe the marks of time have found seams in you, flat spots, errors...I find in you the art,where time is a currency that makes the look of you more valuable.  

There is a reason why starving artists on sidewalks have the prettiest and freshest paints...and why the Masters with their fading colors and crispy parchment are worth millions more...it is the art, not the new.  It is not the current but the ability to wear the cloak of pretty for so long.

You can push me away, let me feel like the time has passed...let my empty hand merely grasp air and flutter back to my side.

But you cannot erase my eyes, nor the pictures of a place...and the flashbulb bright image you remain regardless of how many times it has been seen.

You mourn perhaps the slight delicate trail that a year may bring...and I find the priceless and perfect reflection of the privilege of seeing you still.  Of being able to see you still.

And as the frame of you returns, the dark eyes, the familiar gaze...I find that nothing else matters.  That it is not the arm, the length of leg, the change in a curve or the softness of some skin...but the gaze, fiery and returning, gorgeous and unmoving...that remains.  

And the other pieces wash away, as so many watercolors, while the steadfast beauty of you is all that I have left to see.

Invitations...Reluctance...Acceptance

For some reason he waited.

Well, it was quite obvious why he waited...the last time didn't go so well.  And he was pretty sure it would not be easy this time around either.  But at least this time he had a quasi-plan...something he actually was pretty good at when it mattered.

Unfortunately the tattoo parlor didn't close til late, and he was forced to hang around the back of a parking lot that was strewn with yellow light, chain-link fencing and a few dark characters wandering through the lot but never getting into any car.  He sat in his, making sure the doors were locked.  Christ, maybe he was now a cop since he was definitely in a stake-out.  He almost willed the parlor's back door open but it remained stuck close.

At some point it finally opened, the inside light framing her in a figurine shadow and he instantly knew it was her by the orange speck of a lit cigarrette.  She turned over her shoulder to wave to somebody so she didn't see him as he got out of the car.

Her steps were small and light and she saw him in a brief instant, but didn't recognize and her path clearly pivoted away.  She put down her head and glanced askew at him as he started towards her.

Hey Fair, he said...loudly.  She stopped, head tilted slightly, squinting in the dark.  He drew up both hands, almost in a "see I'm not carrying a gun" pose and walked towards her.

As he got close, and at that point when he knew she had recognized him, her face remained completely stoic.  She may as well have been observing a moth's flutter beneath the lights.  In fact, she looked tired.  That was the only word he could find.

Hey...good evening.  I didn't mean to pop up on you.  You know, in case I scared you.

She drew in from the cigarette...but this time instead of blowing it at him she pursed her lip and blew the smoke sideways.

The shop's closed.  In case you were suddenly brave enough.

He smirked.  I'm still deciding about that...

Then why are you here? 

He almost started a shrug, but knew that would look disingenuous.  He was a good planner.

I actually wanted to ask you something.  At this point he felt like she was still merely regarding him, and had the receptiveness of a pollster's request.  She looked bored.  Bored and tired. 

His plan was kind of turning to a crap-sandwich. 

Look, he started, we've had what, one, maybe 2 conversations?  And they've been more about me not doing something.  So, I figured I'd start somewhere.  And that is to take you someplace where I'd be more comfortable.  Here and he gestured with his arm around them this is kinda your territory.  And you've made it very clear that I'm not entirely welcome.

She was lighting another cigarette as he spoke.  I never said you weren't welcome.  I just asked what you were doing if you weren't going to let me do my job. 

Okay fair.  I mean...fair like that's a fair statement.  Not...you know, your name.

She blew smoke at him.  What do you want.  Not really a question, more like a statement...and then she looked at her watch.

I wanted to ask you to join me. I wanted to see if you'd accompany me and maybe take some time to spend it with me.  He pulled out a thin envelope.  Careful script was scrolled across the front.  He handed it to her.

Major? she said. 

Uhm, yeah...that's me.  Well, that's my rank.

She regarded the writing on the envelope and slid out the flat white hard-board sheet, about 5 by 7 inches.  She read the writing, an amused smile like she had just been let in on an inside joke crossed her lips.  She must have read it two or three times.

You're fucking kidding me, right?  She had stuffed the sheet back in the envelope and held it out to him.

He moved a bit closer.  In the pale light her eyes were the color of the moon, an almost gray.  She had done something with her hair, some new color to the mix.

I'm serious.  He took the paper from her.  He looked at it.  I want you to come to this with me.

You want me to come with you?  To the White House?  She didn't look tired anymore.  Her cheeks for some reason had briefly flared.  Annoyance?  He couldn't tell.

That was my plan.

And why should I go?  Based on our, what is this, our third conversation? 

Because.

Because?

Because I want to show you off. 

She had almost recoiled.  She definitely was slightly taken aback.  You want to show me off?  Like I'm a fucking tattoo of yours, just so you won't have to get one? 

No.  The opposite.

I don't understand.

I want to show you off like I'm a tattoo of yours...something that you'd want on your skin. 

She stared at him with this.  I don't know.

He held out the paper in front of him.  Please take this.  There's time.  Don't decide now.

He turned from her and walked back to his car.  When he got in he looked for her amongst the cars but she was gone.



The envelope sat in her front seat for three days, slightly covered by the Chik-fil-A bag that had been a dinner one night.  She had almost forgotten it when she decided enough was enough.  She needed to clean her car.  As she gathered the empty bags she saw the envelope and the graceful curve of the typography.  She threw the bags away and came back to the car, taking out the envelope.  In the small parking space she looked at it, opened it and saw the image of the White House.  She hurriedly tucked it back in and went inside.


The envelope sat tucked into her vanity mirror, a white space that she could see when she applied her make up.  She had turned the front towards the rear, so as not to see the impressive writing.  It, by itself in her room, had given the place a certain cachet.  She tried to fight it.  Like bringing in a bloom of flowers into an autopsy room, you could not ignore it nor could you imagine it even being there.  But there it was.  A stranger, actually, coming in and revealing a different place, another altogether place then she had even guessed at.

She pushed hard on the mascara and made it double thick.  She wanted to be a little aggressive today. 

But in the next day or two, in small hours, tiny minutes, she felt something pulling...a tide around her feet.

She was listening more to Orla Fallon, a favorite Irish harpist...it relaxed her..as she drew and thought of art she was playing in the background...she hadn't played it in years.

She was shaving her legs.  Daily.

She would walk into her bedroom and she would gravitate her eyes towards the mirror...and see the contrasting white envelope against the darker room.

Fuck it she said to no one.




She stood in front of him, the envelope in her hand.  Her arm was crooked, the hand in the air like the way you'd hold a ball for a dog.  He felt like he knew the answer and steeled himself against the inevitable.

Okay she started.  I will go.

He blinked at that and moved his feet.

But I'm going as a tourist.  Not a date.

A tourist?

Yes.  I'd like to see the White House.

Oh, okay.  Well...will you at least like stand near me and stuff?

I might.

Great.

She broke the distance barrier between them and closed in almost uncomfortably.  Her eyes were back to the 80's denim that he remembered.  She was devoid of cigarette smoke, just a faint trace of a scent of something like a clean laundered sheet. 

If it's not a date he started then what is it?

A chance she said.

With that she put a hand on his shoulder and brushed his cheek with her lips.  The move surprised him but it surprised her even more.

Inadvertently his hand rose to the smear on his cheek.

Don't touch it she said.  It's the only thing I've been able to mark you with so far.

He let his hand fall.  She turned and went back inside the store, leaving him on the sidewalk.

In the car he pulled down the visor and slid open the mirror...he turned his head slightly and saw the crimson smear on his cheek.  He left it there.

Broken, Borrowed, Blurred

And so it happened, as it almost always happens, in a brief, serendipitous moment that was unplanned...unexpected.  Not lightning-in-a-bottle, but that careless place in time when the guard is down and the moon is full and you think there is not a care in the world...

He was, in all places, in a lobby.

And it was the simple act of entering an elevator, a move he had moved so many times, and in his usual style he was head's down, probably staring at the phone until the dead-air of the elevator impacted it and he just happened to glance at the doors now closing Get Smart-style in front of him.

He thought he saw her.

It was an imperfect stare.  A glance.  Askew. A blurred shot but he could tell...in the way you can see somebody on the horizon and know them...he knew.  The gray boring doors closed.

Inadvertently he had already leaned forward...moving towards her...led by his head (his dumb pulsating brain) closely followed by his rapidly racing heart (cue Trish Yearwood song "It was like a lighted match, had been tossed into my soul, it was like a dam had broken in my heart")...but his feet stayed still.  And as he realized that he simply smiled.

He had borrowed her for a time.

It had been a moment in time.  It had been Hailey's comet.  A 500-year event.  A 100-year flood.  He had put up some defenses...he had built some concrete and steel.  Maybe pointed sticks.

He had found a billion pieces of blown-up bridges.  He had perhaps every once in awhile found a few pieces that fit together.  As an experiment he might have put more than a few together.  It resembled a poorly built bridge.  Maybe one person could stand on it...definitely not two.

A broken bridge.  As that elevator door shut the bridge broke anew.  A glance.  Askew.

Her curious walk, the tilt of her.  He felt the thud of a footprint across his chest.

The lights of floors being crossed lit briefly the tiny thin line between the elevator doors...like tiny suns that appeared and disappeared rapidly.  Her briefest of borrowed interludes into his dark planet...she rose and set so very quickly.  She couldn't stay to sunset, she left in a brief sunrise.

A glance.  Askew.  A chance.  Renewed.  To burn fast as a fast-burn match.  Burning the fingertips of a him that had once touched the hot torch of her.

The elevator paused...letting others off, leaving him alone.  In a book Wonka's elevator once tore through the roof and hovered high above.  His climbed and reached the top.  It opened to a elevator lobby.  Empty.

He remembered seeing a piece of her...a glance.  Askew.  At least that is how he hoped to remember it.

The doors closed.  Gray and boring.  He smiled at the broken, borrowed and blurry memory that slowly twisted in his mind, a child's toy spinning and losing its energy...ebbing to a slow collapse until it was picked up to be played with again.



 

Art, Ink, Pale Skin and Palette

He watched them come and go...in and out of the parlor, as he sat there on the bench taking in the day and wondering if he would ever compose himself to cross the threshold of the door.  Traffic hummed beside him and he collected the colors that littered the landscape...the darkened roadway, the colors of cars, the chalky offwhite of the sidewalk.

The visitors were all ages...clearly no younger than eighteen or nineteen...but he was amazed at the diversity.  And he was amazed at the pairings...couples, twosomes, trios...sometimes though a soloist.  It was those folks that he wondered mostly about as they disappeared inside.  Only to return with a new skin.

He got up and walked away, unconvinced.

Two days later, he found himself in the same place.  It was fresh from a rain, puddles silvery and shimmering, the sky in bruises of gray and blue.  Everything seemed a bit muted.

He assumed his usual position on the bench.  There weren't many coming or going.  Which is probably the main reason she walked out.

She was waifish, with hair colored in blondes and browns.  One eyebrow had been plucked in intervals, giving it a lightning bolt effect.  She was exceptionally pale, except for the left arm colored in bright scarlets and soft blues, a weave of flowers, birds and thorns.  On her wrists were scripts.  Her jeans were very tight and she wore a flowing men's v-neck tee-shirt.  Above her collar-bones were two delicate wings.

She was disturbingly pretty.

You a cop? she asked, knowing full well the answer but putting her hands on her hips and standing above him.  She smelled slightly of faint lilacs and a bit of ink.  Her waist was at his eye level and he wondered what other ink she wore.

He laughed.  No, I'm definitely not a cop.

Well you standing out here all the time is making me wonder.

I'm not standing.  

Her eyes dimmed a bit...she had very pale blue eyes.  

Are you a fucking loiterer?

He stood up and he was a head taller than her.

No...I'm and trailed off.  He didn't expect to be this intrigued by her.  He had never seen her so he was absorbing and calculating at the same time.

I was thinking of coming in actually.  You know, thinking about getting a tattoo.

She pulled a cigarette out of her back pocket and then pulled out a Bic lighter.  She inhaled it as it burned, and when she spoke she held the cigarette in her mouth, moving up and down with her voice.

You don't want a tattoo.  

I don't?

If you did you'd be in there.

Not necessarily.  I'm kind of taking it one step at a time.

She blew some smoke at him...for some reason he found it very attractive.  And then she sat down.

Seems to me like you're not taking any fucking steps.  She inhaled again, and looked at her fingernails.  They were painted in a light green color.

She exhaled and the smoke plumed around her.  He absorbed the silence, glanced carefully at her arms and her colors...when she moved the colors moved and he realized it was like watching a moving canvass.

You're staring.

I'm sorry...I just haven't had a chance to see somebody this close.

What do you mean?  Like a female? 

He laughed.  Given our start I'm sure you'd come to that conclusion.  No.  I just haven't seen somebody as attractive as you mixed with this many tattoos.  That's all.

She nodded in a careless way, having heard it all before.  She inhaled again and when she spoke the smoke streamed out.  Well there are a bunch of us. 

I never knew.  Thus...the staring.

You should visit the internet once in awhile.

Ha.  I guess I'll start amending my search patterns.

She stood up, flicked her cigarette down the sidewalk and turned to him.

Fair is all she said, sticking out her hand.

Fair?  Uhm, okay, fair enough.

No.  My name is fair.

Oh.  Like...a cab?

No.  Like the county.

Ah...interesting.

He shook her hand.

Come see me sometime. 

Maybe I will.



2 weeks later he did.  But not to get a tattoo.

If you're not going to get inked why are you here?

He stood in the large room, art on the walls, sheets of paper strewn about.  Colors and ink, needles and cotton, rubber gloves...it was a mix between an art gallery and an emergency room. 

I don't know...I found myself in the neighborhood.  I thought I'd stop in.

Well it's a big step for you.  Maybe we have a lollipop somewhere.  She was head's down, working on a drawing.

He had a thought in his head as she leaned over, the colors different under the brighter lights of the studio.  He always thought that the tattoo was the art, but in her case it combined her pale skin as the greater canvass and she herself, in the totality, was the piece of art.  Her bare spots were just as beautiful as the colored ones.  And like a work in progress she was going to be different tomorrow than today.  And he wanted to share with her how he found it intriguing...fucking interesting...just to be near her.  Near her movements, near her green fingernails that gripped the pencil, near the mixed scents of her perfume and cigarette smoke.  She moved dangerously, with a mouth to cut and a wit to bludgeon, perfect in her imperfections and bold in her display.  She almost dared him to take action.  And that, he knew,was why he didn't.

Come back and see me when you're ready.  Her voice was low and she didn't look up.

Maybe I will.  Fair.

He took a last snapshot with his mind and inhaled so he could remember this place as he departed.  He was already thinking of a place to get inked as he walked out the door and into the suddenly boring light of the afternoon.