Share...don't share...don't care

It is amusing at the parts of you that you allow to merely wash down the drain.

Bits of you....pieces.  You cut away parts and let them get mixed in the downstream.  Parts that once clung to you...were a part of you.  Just nicked away, sliced, cut, shaven. 

Why would I then, feel like that was not a habit?  Why would I have entitlement to being different.

In the revealings it was not so surgical...it was actually quite methodical.  Like a child plowing through a pop-up book, turning the page and moving the parts and watching it grow and reveal...and not being able to wait to turn to the next one...and the next one.

A favorite movie where you cannot wait for the great scene.
A song where the riff is contagious.

A food that you crave...either making or ideally somebody well-heeled serving it to you...bringing it to you.

Discovery.  Unexpected.  Delighted. 

That was you...to me.

The Willy Wonka reveal of you to a part of me that found myself in the shade of you...everything making a collage of colors and tastes...and each one more perfect than the previous one on my tongue.

I found so many locked doors in you.  But at times they were opened.

Once and again...in awhile.  And the rooms behind them were so spectacular....standing in a hallway of dark stained floors and low-dimmed lights...finding rooms of candles and neon...colors I had never imagined....these discoveries of you that you let me find occasionally.

Occasionally.

You were like learning a new language...there was familiarity but not quite exact.  But as uncomfortable as it was to learn a new tongue, I knew I could ultimately convey what I was trying to say.

You knew.

As much as I didn't, I think the biggest part was that you knew.

I revealed more.

I explored, and prodded...and went around the back-way where the weeds were tall to find perhaps a hidden entrance I hadn't seen from the front.

Leaving big footprints and broken stalks to mark my efforts...you could track me in your mind and perhaps open and unlock doors at your whim.

And maybe share.  Maybe reveal.

But mostly it was like those slivers of follicles that you sliced every morning, wantonly letting them slip away from you and drift aimlessly into a drain.

They had once been part of you.

And maybe tomorrow some will grow back.

And that is the effort that I undertake. 

God...I Remember

It was a Sunday...maybe it was.

I don't remember much anymore...little details that elude me.  Times...dates...unimportant.  What I do remember though is the proximity...the sense, awareness...like a teenage-dance when bodies softly touch where never touched before.  It sounds trite...god, I know it does...seems pitiful now.

But then?

You were an IV bag hung beside me, dripping slow medicine into me. You were in the bloodstream.  Comforting...curing.  Yeah...you helped fix me.

You were an antidote...a remedy.  You obliterated the bits of me that were snapped...you reconciled and mended.  You binded.  You bandaged.

In a way you became my religion, you became my deity.  You were quite subtlety the power...the beginning of something that I cared to remember.  The start.

I remember...God I remember waiting for you...

In a quiet evening with only headlights and the sound of heels on bricks.

In a picnic with the grass heavy with humidity.

In an evening...backlit with pinks and peaches...in a storm, exploding around and deafening...but folding into each other...

A winter, with just a fire.

It was brazen.  Wanton.  Chemical.  The introduction of you into the awaiting me.  Placating...pulsating...the wary climb onto the top of the highest diving board and the release of the immersion into the water.  You were the libido, the exhale.

Stolen.  A kiss...another.  A touch.  A glimpse.  A pull-back and a stare.

What are you thinking...exactly now.

I remember...God I remember trying to read your mind.

A thick bound leather book...with a lock.  Maybe a time and again when you might open it and pull out a page and let me read it before crumpling it in your hand and hiding it away.

You whispered words...you spoke in tongues.  You invaded quiet silence and broke it with a violence.  A tone.  A reveal.  Exposure...like standing nude before me...not naked...nude because you are art.

You gave in...you released.  You allowed....you offered.

I wanted to keep you for myself...such selfishness knows no bounds.  I coveted...I sinned.

I remember you dressing...God I remember the way you returned to your outside world after sharing your inside one with me.

I drank from your cup...
I took your chalice.

I worshiped you.

I remember worshiping you...God I remember worshiping you.

In a pink and peaches evening I still do.

Mile-markers

He let the engine die and let the ticking of the engine settle as he waited in the driveway.

It had been awhile since he had last seen her...but she had been branded in him in an indelible fashion.  The years were like mere minutes and he felt the slight heat rise inside of him as he anticipated her arrival.  The clenching, anxious moments...what the hell...he needed to just relax.

She pulled open the door to the large beachside home and exited in a blur of white and the scent of sunburn and tanning lotion.  She mouthed the word "hi" and got into the seat of the jeep, pulling a pair of sunglasses off her head and nestling them on her face.  She looked at him...like waiting, like she had just seen him versus last seeing him months ago, and she implored him to start the car and drive.

He did.

The sound of the engine and the uptick in the roar of the wind allowed them to be silent...the noise of traffic, the sound of seabirds....the acceleration to the speed limit left them without a need to fill the void of the silence...only when he stopped at the stoplight was it suddenly quiet.  He could smell the potions of her...it smelled of a summer night, full moons and fireflies.  It was pine, sap, sand and salt. If he would ever find a candle that captured this scent he would fill his house with it.  A breeze lit up and the scent disappeared.  She looked at him through her sunglasses.  Her hair was tousled, a bit disrupted...he had seen that before...just never with her fully clothed.

A Pete Yorn song played on the radio.

He pulled into the Corolla Village Barbecue...the lot was filled and noisy.  He found a place where the jeep would fit, tilting on one side, the crushed shell driveway slightly white against the backdrop of the evening.  He stopped the car, turned the keys off and got out.

Dinner.

Dinner was sublime.  The smoke of the mesquite, the scent of the rub...the hustle of the kitchen.  It was noisy inside, the crush of people and sweet tea balanced on waitresses' trays...they ordered brisket and beans, Coronas and sides of water.  They shouted over music and over patrons...they talked with their hands and every so often their hands collided and it was like a fork stuck into a socket...he almost had to withdraw it just to realize they had touched.

It was if no time had happened...no time had spooled...that her perfect magnetic part of her continued to exist and was the exact polarity that attracted his...nobody wanted to mention it...they just let it sit out on the table like the unused spoon.

At one point she had asked what he was thinking...he shook her off...no need to go there.  This was a dinner...not a date...not something promising...rather, it was just a meal.

They walked out of the restaurant...they jostled slightly against each other in a dangerous glance of bodies that were exceedingly familiar.  Or had at least been once.


On the car ride home, up the main drag, they passed the mile markers heading north.  It was dark, the ocean to the right of them, and now and again a white streak of lightning pierced down.  To the left was the last remnants of sunset.  It was a between time.

It was how he imagined them...between the storm and between something dying...between the thunder and the evening-tide.

She fiddled with the radio, found a song and sat back.

The sky was dark black and burnt orange, depending on the direction.

He pulled into the driveway, where she was staying.

She leaned over, a quick kiss, smelling of barbecue and the salt of an evening...in a minute she was gone.

He was parked so that he could see the Atlantic, and it was dark water with darker skies.  Again a quick bulb of lightning parted the sky and for a moment it made him forget the bit of blackness that was soon to return.

It happened anyways...it always did when she departed.

Sunday evenings...without a you

Time was always a bit of an enemy.

Never too much.  Never together.

He listened to the waning sounds of the saxophone peter out into the mike, the slight breathiness of it as it ended...a few claps from the patrons.  The place was dead...of course it was, being a Sunday evening and a rainy one at that.

He had fled the pour while it was just starting, but heard the rhythm of the rain as it pounded outside...he glimpsed a few in the audience still dripping as they made their escape inside well past him.  He lifted his drink, Angels Envy, and took a long draw.

Sundays sucked.

As much a start of the week as the end of the weekend, he secretly hated them.  His Catholic portion chafed at such a reveal...but it was true.

The new song started and was a bit better...more drum, more bass.  It was a little more melancholy and it fit his mood like the way the wet rain bonded his shirt tighter to his skin.

A few smokers turned the air a bluish hue...it was amazing it was still allowed in some parts...but every rule had its exception.

She had been his.

The one outlier.  The one who had taken a slight step into his world and thrown bright paint against his white walls.  She had turned her sweet eye upon him and intertwined his fingers against hers.  But mostly she had stayed consistently inconsistent.

She had said goodbye in an afternoon that felt like it was mercurial.  But, as he took another sip, it was increasingly permanent.

He hated that.  He wanted a nuclear effervescence...he wanted a barn-fire.  Instead it was a quick and surgical and sterile removal of him from her.

He was the band-aid that had gotten wet, and just became unstuck.

The band had introduced a trumpet, and it brought a noisy cascade to his thoughts....it was not unpleasant, but it was interruptive.

He finished his drink and signaled for another....a double pour with ice in a separate glass.  He could add bits and pieces to mellow the drink.

He had to waken in a few hours...but he debated on staying here with her dust-cloud motes in his mind or staring at the ceiling in the quiet of a hotel room.

He stayed...knowing that each minute would penalize him in the morning...but it was why he figured he'd stay.

He thought randomly of her fingernails...she never painted them except for a pearl colored scheme, and he realized she rarely wore anything other than black or white....

Like the piano keys rumbling nearby.

He wondered in the fleeting moments now that he had opened the unlocked door in his mind and invited the contents to spill on the floor...what she may have been doing...at this moment.  His watch reminded him that she was likely asleep.

He remembered that he had told her, quite often, that she was beautiful.  That she was unique...talented...and struck a chord with him.  That she was discovery...she was vastness.  She was unexplored but when encountered it reminded him of evenings and subtleties...the way music hangs in the air after the last note is played.

She may have listened...it clearly didn't work...didn't matter.

But he knew he had communicated.

It was Sunday...and mostly over.

And he turned to listen to the jazz as it spilled over him, washing away the tiny bits of her that had been exploding into pieces of his brain and it sounded like the rain outside had ended after all and he could soon retreat to the streets outside that were still glistening from the storm.

Sunday Around The Early Part of the A.M.

Perhaps the cup of coffee is warming as you hold it with both hands...the rise of steam slowly awakening as you watch the morning unfold for you...

Perhaps you're close enough to hear the slight spill of waves...there is still a lot of glass to the Atlantic, smooth clear water light enough to see through...likely low tide or at least a calm that feels like the ocean is just starting to stretch.

Perhaps you can only hear the sounds of the gulls...spiraling and starting to descend towards the water.

Perhaps you're still in your sleep-clothes, outside on a private balcony...the early sun not so hot yet but you can tell it will be full-throated and heated later.

Perhaps the inside of the house is still quiet...a peace that rarely is seen once day breaks but a welcome absence...you can have some moments alone, some seconds to stir...perhaps feeling the stress drain slightly from your shoulders as you realize you have many days like this ahead of you this week...no phones, no computers...no work...at least not the usual load.

You taste the coffee and sip slowly, like you could let each moment stretch just a few bits more...elongating...a minute suddenly adding seconds and time becoming the way the sun moves across the sky rather than a minute hand.

That is the way I want to imagine you...in the salt-filled air before the afternoon humidity rolls in...feeling like a fresh sheet of the day has been torn out and tossed into the sky...drifting, untouched...spotless...without a single thought of me to spoil your day.

Scorched Flower

 

In a summer, when the wind held its breath and the day lay like a sheet of wet-wool he would drive past the small little church and wonder what sort of words were written on the scraps of paper in the Prayer Box.  

The Prayer Box was about the size of a good-sized cooler, bigger than a mail box, stuck at the end of the drive-way where passers-by could take a piece of paper, scribble with the pencil attached by a string to the side and offer up missives...offer up wishes, cures, miracles.  He never saw anybody stop by, so he often wondered if it was even used.

One day in the heat of an early summer-start in June, he saw the pastor walking down the dirt driveway...he pulled over slightly, watching as the gray haired minister opened up the top of the box and pulled out handfuls of folded slips.  There must have been 25 or more...each pulled like a lucky lottery number, stuffed into his shirt pocket.  It bulged after a minute or so.

Sitting in the car, he felt amazingly small. He had written all of them.

And so far, despite it being a single request, multiplied over many instances, it remained unanswered.

He watched the pastor walk up the hill, unfolding the small pieces, reading them and then putting them back into his pocket.  At one point he thought the man paused halfway up the hill, glanced in his direction, and then resumed his pace.  In his car, he stared back at him through his sunglasses, never wavering.  But he wondered if the old man read his lips as he mouthed "come on, give me something."

The written words were pretty much chicken-scratched from memory; fueled by bourbon and the color brown and all its permutations...he wrote of the salt of sweaty skin, he wrote of the warmth of a mouth...he scribbled at the point where her hair arced around her ear and how he drove his tongue deep into the fold...he wrote of her breath hitching...her mouth mentioning his name...he wrote in tiny sequences that unfolded.  They were not prayers...not exactly....rather, they were scenes that now, in the full heat of summer, he perhaps had hoped they'd be replayed.  

It was a false hope.  And the fullest part of a prayer is in its truth.  Therefore, these had no chance.

He watched the pastor shaking his head slightly as he read a tiny script of paper.  

He pulled the car out on the road and drove away.

Yet the words continued.  The spill, like a faucet turned on after a long time alone, sputtered, and splashed...until a gentle rhythm spooled out.  Halting at first, he intertwined his thoughts with his wants...he started using full pages of paper, the words piling on and darkening the white.  The paper had to be folded into quarters to fit the Prayer Box slot...and the 25 became 45.  And the pastor started bringing a paper sack to the end of the driveway.  

After some time, he realized the pastor knew he was just an outlet.  That the prayer wasn't even real...it wasn't an ask.  It was a hope.  And even then it was more of gesture.  A politeness. 

The way a flower will still bloom despite lack of water.  

He knew that his words would end up in the pastor's can in the corner of his office.  There was no prayer in them...no holy request.  It was carnal, visceral...thoughts of encounters that he felt might be answered.  

She had been a part of that summer...that succulent and fertile place where she bloomed in his mind, his touch...full blooms that created colors and pastels that she alone possessed.  

And he held that craggy flower...long after the rains stopped...long after the sun beat the stalk into a brittle black stem.  He wrote a few words now and again...but the earth would now consume itself and erase the colored parts that were there before.  The pinks and yellows now reverting back to the earth-tones.

The dark tones.  The sepia moving into a coffee colored mixture that was rain-less...

The dirt colored colors that were just like the color of her eyes.

He picked up the piece of paper and started writing again...black letters like the color of scorched stems that dotted the white of the paper that was filled with pieces of her.

 

Soliloquy

It was June and it was rain. 

From far above the city it was black and gray...but close enough to hear the cacaphony of sirens and the occasional horn.  New York was angry when wet, and it tended to seeth with clenched teeth that lowered the view with fog and low clouds. 

He had dialed her a few times throughout the day, but the ringing went the usual four times and then into voicemail. 

"Hi, this is--" Click...he lowered his thumb on the red radio button of his phone.

For a bit he watched the taxis, distinctively yellow and amazingly maneuverable move across the lanes below...the other cars melting in colors that were washed out...blues, whites, grays...only the taxis and their majority presence stood out in the scene.

He dialed her again.

This time, she picked up. 

Listen....he interrupted her...just listen.




I've been away from you awhile, but I think I remember your stare.  I think I remember a fast-burning retina when you were not looking at me but you were looking at who I was.  You loved me in that glance...and now...

and now...you look at me like the stranger on the elevator who expected a clean ride to the bottom but I disturbed his descent...like a beaten prisoner who hears the footsteps in the stairwell of his next interrogator...like the person on the street who accidently bumps into me but keeps walking.

You glance at me.  You lower your lids to me.  A slow blink of disregard.

I find that maddening.  I find the whole concept frightening.  

She murmured back to him..."frightening?"

Yeah.  It's frightening....because what it means...at least in my take-away...is that one of us is dead.

"Dead?"

Yeah...at least to each other.  

Taxis jockeyed for awhile around stopped trucks, horns blaring their discontent.  Sidewalks moved slowly with the parade of umbrella clutchers and the city looked down and rained gray wet rain.  The city moved along though.  It let out its breath.

Yeah...he returned to say...it must be me.  I am really...really sorry about being unable to bring back life in a look.  I'm really sorry that I cannot put lanterns back behind your eyes and maybe some light when you pause to cast a gaze.  And as I watch a city that I have seen a million times...like the way you saw me a million times as well...I get that you will just keep watching but never really looking...never really staring.  At least at me anymore.

The phone was like an oxygen-line in a hospital...somebody breathing in and something providing oxygen.

He hung up, pretty sure which was which.