Trains to New York City

He loved the city...

He loved the city the way you loved a lover...an intimate.  The way you were always a visitor but never home.  Each trip revealed something new, something unique...the way a sunset reflected off of a particular window of a particular building...new colors, new scents.  But there were constants...the same things that continuously brought him joy in his return.

The city was young enough to be beautiful, but old enough to carry it.  And wear it well.

A lot of the city was unknown to him...she would not reveal.  But what she did was lovely...and many times tender.  A lot of times though she remained quiet, and leaving him guessing.  And when he departed as he always did he wasn't ever sure if she would be found watching him disappear.

Even if time and space inserted itself between them his love for the city never waned.  And stepping out from the steps of Penn Station he felt that familiar energy, the familiar heartbeat of this place he so strongly wanted to call home...but he would never arrive at that.  It wasn't to be.  It couldn't be.  She kept her dark-eyed heart in the long concrete miles and soaring tops of buildings.

But while there she would provide, and she would reflect.  And she would allow him to enter this little kingdom of Gotham and for awhile make him feel like he possessed a part of her.

He loved the city the way you loved a lover...a confidant.  To anticipate the return...but never know quite when it would happen.  Just knowing that it would and that he would feel the exact same thing that he always felt.  However long ago it had been.

Meds

There was always this one move, this one gesture...it was normally when they were reacquainted after a bit of time and the nearness was still a burden...like strangers (but not strangers) who slowly circled each other, slight feints, movements...testing comments and dialogue...slowly perhaps growing comfortable...an iron slowly warming once plugged in.  She would reach out to grab him...sometimes after a bit of a joke, or a sentence that was playful but had potential...perhaps damaging or cutting but meant with no harm.  She would reach out to him and in that extension he knew that the bits of ice that had formed between them had melted, and she was warming to him.  He loved that moment when her arm extended and she clasped him, even if for just a second.

Because she was his prescription.

His medicine.  The dull pain that was usually an absence that throbbed into full blown ache when he dared to let her weigh on his mind with the slight weight of her physical memory against him.

He could not take her daily...she wouldn't allow it.  Rather, dispensed like a cautious drug it was taken in snippets...hours...day parts that were allowed.  While there was never any chance of over-indulging she never let it become the risk.

She portioned off her parts to him like a recovering addict slowly weans off the one thing he cannot live without.

And he would never know when she would provide...never knew when she might appear.  Never knew when she might allow.  The addiction was just as much the mystery as it was the attainment.

She kept herself from him...as much as she kept herself for him.

All he knew was this...that the absence was a blade, and in its continuous portion it drew itself against him in a lengthy cut that was to a bone...a cold, lingering cut of flesh that flayed and exposed and felt like a toothache in his soul.  But small certain bits...little tiny portions of her that she gave to him in words and in writings completely mended...suturing his suffering and pouring warm oils in his wounds and binding them in cloth that she once wore.

He could smell her in the bindings...the sweet scent.  It invaded him and reminded him of her.

It was enough for him to fall asleep...quietly coddled in her sharing, her parts of her that mended him with her memory, her close glance against him, the sweet science of her fixing him and his bitter broken bits...

Only to awaken and find himself completely splintered and deconstructed...adrift and away from her and broken with her absence.

To start the day again, away from her.

Again.

Halfway

We are halfway through the year with the shortest day signaling the start of the cold portion of Winter.

The nights are no longer as long as they've been...each day, hour by hour they will brighten slightly.  Imperceptibly.

What the sky doesn't reveal is they will remain so glaringly long across the distance between us.  Across the hours and time and moments...across roads and traffic.  Across state lines, blurred lines.

I hate the start of winter, but candidly it has been winter for some time now...

Although every once in awhile, when we dart into each other, on that rare occasion, it crams an entire summer's day into the heat and smashes the distance into an inch that I so rapidly want to close quietly, in a brief and elegant silence...that lasts like the longest day of the year.

Pieces of you stuck in me

It was cold...that he remembered.  The kind of cold that was blanketing...it sought out your ears, your neck...your hands.  It blew unkindly into him...it was grimacing.

But as he walked past the Christmas tree lot he slowed...the lure of the lights, the scent of the pines.  The hawkers extolling the virtues of their trees, the spirit of the piped-in music...it felt like a holiday, like a time that was worth slowing down and tucking away minutes into your pocket so you could relax, could realize...it was that...a realization.

He dialed her up as he stood freezing, gazing at the trees pristine in their condition, knowing they only had weeks to live.

He got her voicemail.  Hey...I'm just standing here in the biggest city of the world...and they have these amazing christmas trees...amazing probably because there are so very few trees in this city so it's this dichotomy...and anyways, I just wanted to tell you---
and then the call stopped, the recording space cut out.  He looked at his phone.

Fuck.

He stood amongst the greens and the lights and the dark sky above with the million lights of the city.  He stood beneath a smeared full moon that everybody could see and appreciate...but he harbored the secret that he was one of the so very few that knew her, and had seen her, and could appreciate her for the very things that were unique and worth studying.

He glanced down and noticed a needle fallen on the ground, a green sliver from a tree in the lot.  He picked it up, this sparse remnant of the full blown tree and put it in his palm.  Its tiny point pricked him, bit into his skin like teeth, incisors, sharp and pointy.

He looked at his phone again.  Thought about calling.

Like the piece of the tree that had fallen, like the tiny needle in his hand, he merely wanted to be part of her...actually he took that back.  He wanted to be a bigger part of her...he actually wanted to tell her that he wanted to be the city to her, the moon smeared across the sky...the first thing she saw at night and the first thing she saw in the morning.  That he wanted to be in her view, in her eyesight.  He wanted to bring her packages and favors...that he would wrap her in warmth like a coat from a closet, and unwrap her in an evening when she came home...that he would draw baths for her and hold the towel when she emerged.

She was the evening, the darkened beauty against a city full of lights, the curve of the earth when the sun first touched...she was the crisp stark features of night against the cold, the weight of a hand that was held in a snowstorm...the way you get out of the weather...indoors and safe.  He wanted her to be there, wanted her to share there...to be clothed and close.  Bulky clothes and layers but ultimately a mouth that was warm and inviting.  Allowing.  He held up the small needle and realized she had been inside him all this time, like this tiny part, piercing and bleeding...feeling alive and loving, warming, touching.  He didn't call her back, but he knew what he would say the next time she was next to him.

Cowlings (But at Night...Not Day)

Taking 460 north out of Wakefield and up towards Waverly there are a few spots where one might stop and dine.  In the best of broad daylights it would be super simple to see these locations, easily perched besides the road, identified with big signs and a beckoning sense of something local.

The snow had drawn deep enough to crust the highway, and the sleet put a nice slick glaze on it so that the car seemed to glide along on skis, with each bobble threatening to careen him off the road.  He edged slowly, trying to see and more importantly stay in his lane.  But nobody was out.  Nobody was stupid enough to be out.  

dreamers and daredevils he murmured, the cold of the wet in his hair dissipating, replaced by a new fear...of running adrift and being stuck and being stuck would lead to being dead.  

He wondered why he had even departed, why he wouldn't debate her to stay...stay in a separate room, stay on a separate floor...but he knew that if she was left to that choice that there might be the chance that she might come find him...and right now she wasn't in a searching mood.  She was rather in a mood to stay alone.  Stay away.

And so that was why he found himself driving in hazard conditions, idiotic and insane, up a highway that was so poorly lit he sometimes was lost in the horizon of white and had to crawl along, looking for any markers swept wet by the sleet so that he could orient his angle.  It was in these crawling that he saw some pale yellow lights...and at first he thought they might be a car or maybe even cars...but cars had white lights.  As he moved forward he realized it was a building...and in closing the distance it became a restaurant.  

no fucking way.

He kept on, the yellow against the sleet sluicing in front of him, until he was alongside of it.  There were no cars outside in the lot...but he saw somebody in there.  So he pulled in.

There are a ton of tales about good samaritans, peaceful folks who lend a hand, extend a gesture...people that help lift you up and brush you off and send you on your way.  This is not about those people.  This was about something dark.  About something that doesn't give you peace but only extends your agony.  He wished he had known that before pulling into the lot.

He sat for a moment with the car turned off, the gravel beat of sleet against the car, and a lone flurry mixed in.  It was dead on 32 degrees, per the car outside temperature gauge now blackened without the engine being on but just before he turned the key he checked.  

The yellow lights spilled gingerly out.  He opened the door, pelted by the wet, and strode to the door. 

It was open.

He stood in the entrance, looking around.  Completely empty, save for the man behind the counter who regarded him curiously.  He looked like he might have been just about to wrap up...head out, flip the sign and go home.  But there were no other cars in the lot.

Do you have liquor?

The man behind the counter grinned and set down his hand towel.  He gestured towards one of the seats with his hand and nodded.  Yes sir...we do.

So with that he strode towards the counter, dripping a few drops as he walked and sat in one of the sturdy chairs bolted to the floor.  Victor said the man behind the counter, introducing himself.  He offered his hand and shook it...it was warm.

What kind of bourbon do you have....Victor?

Victor frowned for just a second, doing mental inventory.  Then nodded....well we have the usuals...Makers, Knob...

I'll have a Knob...neat...double.

Done.

Victor disappeared into the swinging doors and he could hear him rummaging.  He had picked Knob as it had been a piece of their puzzle...an introduction to her.  It was synonymous.  

Victor emerged, holding the door with one hand...I'm sorry, I thought we had it.  Looks like we're out. I do have Makers...and I'll give you a double for the price of a single.

He shook his head slightly...the night was bespoke of things that were no longer...

That'll do.

Victor closed the door and the rummaging started again.

He finished his third and there was no letting up outside.  The sleet wailed against the glass and the roof...he could see his car melting into some sort of ice object and he officially was stopping to care.  The storm outside would not or could not compare to what ice was inside of him.  Victor had left him to his own devices, cleaning and straightening so he stared at his dying phone and dying ice in his glass and felt warm finally.  Despite the ice.

Victor? he said, turning to the man across the room.

Yes sir?

Why are you still open?

Sir?

Why. Are. You. Still. Open? I mean it's shitting the world outside...nobody is coming.  Why not kick me out?

Victor approached, toweling off a glass.  Well...it's because I live out back...I can walk home.  So I stay...in case...you know, people drop in.

People drop in?  It's a fucking hurricane in winter outside.

You came in.

He picked up his glass.  He regarded it and took a sip.  Amen, brother.  I did come in.  In the nick of time too.

Well sir then there you go.  I'm still open for you in the nick of time.

He set down his glass.  He realized that he was in no shape to be driving...no way under pristine conditions and with the weather outside he may as well go stumble into a snowbank.

Victor?

Again, from across the room....Yes sir?

Victor, I'm not going to be able to go out...I'm not going to be able to call a cab or an Uber and I'm not going to be able to walk home or to a hotel.  So...Victor...Vic...do you have any suggestions?

The place was quiet...like a church on a Monday...but without all the prayers save the one he was saying to maybe fix the ruptured and fractured parts of him that were definitely not healing but were feeling a little better with the brown in his glass.

Sir...Victor was weighing his answer...looking around and knowing the options were what one might call exceptionally limited.

Sir you could stay here...not in the chair...but you know...in a booth? He was looking with his eyes as he spoke, regarding the rows against the window.

Here?  

Yes.  Here...inside.  I could turn out the lights and you could stay here.

A slight pause as one places odds and the teeter-totter leans in one direction...Well fine...but fuck me Victor, this ain't some hotel.  So you may as well pour me one on the house.  He held up his glass...and Victor took it and ambled back behind the doors.

In the morning the sun came through the plate glass windows like a carving knife, waking him up way before he intended.  His neck hurt from the angle and he was cold, his feet still asleep as they dangled off the edge of the booth.  But he had survived...not unexpected...but in his departure earlier last night he had low hopes and very few chances of making it as far as he had come.

He saw the empty bottle of Knob on the counter, and just like that the doors in his mind blew open and she blazed in with a fury of scars and the sense of flowers plucked from stems and bite marks on lips and he remembered that he was tasting the memory of the past evening and it was bitter and it was reminiscent and it was familiar and outside was a cold that took your breath away but inside his chest it was even colder, even cooler and infinitely darker than that day outside in Wakefield.

Bathing & Strangling

Outside it was snowing, the type of snow that sits on the cusp of sleet, hard and tiny and white, blowing across the lights on the patio.  It was windy in the southeastern corner of Virginia, and it was flat so the wind came with an extra lash.  He could hear it rubbing against the house the way a cat rubs against a post.  Nudging, almost sensual.

Upstairs he had caught her, in her own sensuality.  At least to him.  He had opened the door to the bathroom where she had been bathing, and as she was standing there were a few droplets of water that fell from her.  Her back was to him, her nakedness pink from the hot water, her ends of her hair darker from the wet, and her fine shape was clear in the candle-lit room.  Outside snow spitted and blurred but her pale form was warming.  He announced himself with a slight cough and she turned her head to him.

Can you get me a towel?  She was coy, her back to him, the water droplets slowing their dripping as the water level in the tub slowly subsided.

He handed her a towel and walked out the door.  He knew when she wanted to be alone, and always without her saying it.

It had been that way for awhile now...this slow strangulation.  She would provide a bit of her, just enough sustenance to maintain.  Just a sliver to feed, like a starvation diet...just to keep barely alive.  He wasn't sure where it came from, but just like fall suddenly wakens up and it's winter...it was something like that.  Unannounced, certainly not discussed.

He heard her footsteps upstairs, and then again as she descended the steps.  There was some music on in the kitchen, something faint.  He couldn't hear any words.

Outside the snow had stopped and the sleet had started.  You could hear it on the windows, on the roof.  Against the front door.  The white flakes, so tiny before, turned into long dark gray lines.

She crossed into view and he asked her if she wanted something to drink. She held up a glass with a little bit left in it...he couldn't tell if that was an answer.  So he poured himself a glass over some ice...a large piece, very unlike the small pieces pebbling outside.

He went into the darkened living room, knowing he didn't have much time left.  Maybe just enough to finish the drink.  After a bath she was usually tired.  There had been times when the bath had been a pre-cursor...a cleansing, an anointing before they clutched and clung together.

Now it was a transition to her climbing into bed while he drove away, regardless of the weather.  She had fed him his small portion, she was still just slowly strangling the bits of him that she cared about. Such pieces were growing fewer.

He turned from the room and its cold windows and walked back towards her.  He neared her, and since she was holding the glass in her hand he gently reached out with his until they almost touched.  The gap between the glasses was tiny, it was millimeters...but it was separation.  And a border.  And whoever reached across had given in.

He moved his glass until it touched hers in a soft toast.

She didn't say anything.

He mentioned something about a goodbye, finishing his drink and putting the glass down.  She stood up, her hand coming up and resting briefly on his shoulder, moving to his neck.  Her fingers were cold from the drink...at least he liked to think that.



Outside the sleet had covered his car in an icy sheen, completely covering the windows and the roof.  It was still coming down hard and brutal, thrust by a wind and soaking his hair quickly.  He had to use his key to clear out the keyhole in the door and it didn't open at first, the ice freezing it stuck.  He pulled harder and it splintered and he let himself in.  He didn't have an ice scraper.

He turned on the engine, asking for it to warm quickly, shivering in the blast of the air vents trying to defrost the windows.  His hair had frozen a little, and was now melting, sending tiny rivulets down his back.  Tiny droplets, not too dissimilar to the drops that had fallen from her in the tub.

Outside it was dark except for the porch light.  When she turned it off he was in complete darkness, the sleet pulsing on the roof of the car.  He turned on his headlights and looked through the tiny hole the vents had created.  He tried turning on the wipers but they were still frozen.

He sat in the cold, bathed in a freezing drip of leftover snow, the crush of the night and the wind and the storm seeming to strangle his thoughts, dimming him to just very empty thoughts as he turned the wheel and tried to navigate back from where he once was.

His headlights barely raised a fuss in the sleet...

The Worth of One Extra Hour

When I collect the pennies and nickels of the minutes we spent together, it truly adds up to quite a hefty sum...but why is it now...now in these days that spread thin across many weeks that I feel like the one deficit that I truly have is the inability to spend time with you.

The way time speeds when you are kiss-close; the way it drags when you can barely even speak to me and your correspondence is a few conservative words that probably scared you to even write.

Time was never our friend...but it was our favorite part when together...usually measured in minutes but sometimes longer.

It feels like something I can no longer give you...and something you'd prefer not to part with.

I imagine if we were in the past...when we could sit in a car and listen to a radio while the rest of the world went to sleep...we'd talk..about things we worried about, things we dreamed about...a commercial coming on and then back to music...and mostly I like to think we'd sit silent.  Just grateful for the shape of you next to me...near...and just giving me your time.  Nothing else, and that would be all that I would want.

Or if we sat high in a city...the lights spread out across us....a drink before us.  Time was in the taillights of the taxis...the changing of the street lights.  It wasn't impacting us...it was just reminding us that while we were together the rest of the place kept moving on.

The time I spend away from you is heavy and dark...the time with you is bubble-gum pink and cotton-candy thin...it is so unfair.

But it is to be expected.

So given the ability to stop time tonight, for just an hour and then relive it as we set clock backs in some well-worn ritual, I wish that if I had the ability to spend any extra hour in any way then you would realize it would be to spend it with you.

In whatever shape or form that might be...listening to gaps of silence on a phone, sitting on the edge of a porch watching fireflies...on the cold banks of the Atlantic as it grays in the winter...in the post-peak stand of trees in the south when the leaves are mostly brown and crunchy...in an early morning that is increasingly darker and now that any daylight that we had saved is gone.

Time does that.  Distance does that.  Together...well...I just feel like I've run out of both.

Mint

He woke up on the other side of the bed...he heavy lidded his eyes and could see the faintest parts of the sun peeking into the window and he felt her beside him like a treasure that he had kept safe for the night.

Her presence was like air..like something he needed to consume to stay alive...he felt rather than heard her breathing, but he imagined she was asleep and her hair was askew.  It brought a faint smile to his lips as he shared the small room with her...this world that was shrunken...it was now just the two of them in a very small space and it was the clean-slate of a day breaking upon them.  No wrongs.

He had brief and startling memories of the night before...the bruise of a kiss, a brutal collision and the comfort of her softness...her skin was a clothing he longed to wear, he could only pull her into him as much as he could...but she made him beautiful in her cloaking.  When she was on him, within him, he was golden...she was radiant in the quiet of the room except for her heightened yearnings...the clutch, the clench of their hands as they explored and owned, declaring ownership of the inches they shared. It was the part of him that he so readily gave...but it was her return that let him let go.  They were merely quite happy in the embrace.

Happy....a state of euphoria that is fleeting.  He felt it as he lay in the pillow softness of a morning.  Hearing her softly beside him just made him that much happier.

He hated the thought of her waking but loved the idea of her looking at him.  He hated disturbing her but loved a flash of memory crossing her eyes when she had collapsed against him.

Mostly he adored the parts of hers that she questioned...a wrinkle on the eyes, a slight change.  He couldn't tell her adequately...that she was air, that she was required...whatever form that took. She was needed.

And as he lay there, undisturbed...he felt the hand of hers on his heart.  The hand of hers in his mind, finding memories, finding colors.  Redefining the definitions...redefining beauty...grace.

Reminding him that she walked upon his heart and left such imprints.  He thought of that as she slept beside him.

The sun was alighting in the room and would soon fill it with its yellow glaze.  He looked forward to it, seeing her in full gaze, her eyes and her glance against him.  He knew that if he kissed her, slightly parting of lips and letting her talk to him through the embrace that he would taste her.  He would taste her and her dreams, her ambitions...her inside parts and her thoughts...and he knew if he turned slightly and placed his lips upon hers that he would taste the sweet delicious part of her and it would taste like mint.

November-ish

It was mostly the slow death spiral of leaves departing the limbs...the propeller motion in some, the back and forth sway of others as they resigned themselves to becoming part of the earth...plucked from a bright colored past and joining the thousands of others just like them.

November is as much an emotion as it is a month.  November is the bones of summer...the skeletal frame of something unfed and dying, once vibrant and now amongst the ruins.  Easily crumbled and forgotten in the quiet absorption into soil.  Discarded comes to mind.

Ignored. Speeding past and unobserved...the clutch of colors in the ground now meshing into a seamless one, unregarded.  Oblivious.

Oh how you burned sweet colors against me...like the orange of an oak in full bloom, the purple reds of a maple...you caught my eye against a thousand others, you stood out amongst the throng.  In the gaze of one against the horizon you were the silhouette sought after...the familiar...the cordial...expected, a memory built upon a layer and another and soon like stacked stone there was a solid.  Something fairly immoveable.

Such folly...in the easy crunch of leaves crumbling beneath a simple step we find cracks and fissures...weak points and vulnerabilities.

We become plucked from each other with a simple breeze...adrift in a quiet of an afternoon...we fall apart from each other to drift against the spill of others.

Perhaps our last hope is that we might be gathered in somebody else's arms and be used to fuel a kindling fire...easy and fast to burn...to disintegrate and burn quickly.

The way we used to burn against each other...a fever...a flint against rock emotion, kinetic and energized...not this autumn pace, this fall doze.  This lazy pace of acceptance...of the time it takes a leaf to fall from the highest point of an oak...it will finally fall.  I know it will.  It's a law and it's called gravity.

I know it well...the way parts of me fell when I was with you...warmed, melted...unhinged...falling against you, falling with you...I am a fast friend of gravity and the gravitational pull you own of me.

But it slows...the pull...the draw...the sun dips lower and the days grow shorter.  You're further away from me than you ever could be.

The nights grow longer and the temperatures grow lower.  

And now the bourbon has replaced your eyes, the warming liquid the taste of you and the ice...well the ice just reminds...the coolness.  It's not cold, but it is exceptionally cool...

Like the Pacific northwest winds that cascade and catch a front and breath deep cold in the face of an evening...that tumble leaves that were once a color and now just become a part of the sky briefly before cascading into a layer...layering upon the earth in a weak fashion.

Mostly I just miss the way you tumbled into my arms.  My limbs...our limbs.  We were summer.  We were heat and sweat and gravity could give a damn...we fell together.  We clung.

Here now...it is November.

In my mind it is already winter.

Horror Story

Halloween on a Monday just feels wrong...like the only way you could end the worst day of the week is by making it even longer by pretending to be scared, afraid or amused by little kids demanding candy due to the mere fact that they were dressed up in a costume.


He watched the sun slide lower in the sky...where he lived now kept the young kids away so there would be no disturbance, no knocking on doors.  So the evening could be looking like Halloween as the orange sky gave way to black but it wouldn't be behaving like Halloween with the incessant slog of kids.

He set his drink down on the edge of the balcony, balancing precariously on the ledge hundreds of feet in the air.   He knew the moon tonight was a waning crescent...disappearing.  It felt about right..the one pretty thing that he could count on in an evening was slowly fading.  Until it looked like a wry smile.

He had seen that image before...he had seen it in a dream but it was still somewhat horrifying to him now.

In it, it must have been Halloween because he remembered opening the door many times and handing out the small chalky candy hearts in handfuls...people who he didn't recognize...and he grabbed with both hands these hundreds of pieces of candy and dropped them into bags.  And they kept coming back...as his supply dwindled.

Finally he ran out, bag crinkling as he turned it over, hoping for at least one tiny piece to remain to give away.

The door knocked again and he opened it...and she was there.  Wearing a wry smile, like that of a waning moon.

She held no bag but rather simply held out her hand.  He had nothing else to give her.

She tilted her head, curiously, like she didn't believe him.  And merely raised her hand and drew it closer to him until her palm was flat against his shirt, just above where his heart stayed beating.

With a savage yank she plucked his from his chest, and turned and walked down the sidewalk...her hand in her mouth and he could hear her crunching, like the sound made when you bit into one of those tiny candy hearts...that's what is sounded like...well that...

and her laughing.

He had awakened before he could look down, but here, as the sun was flattening out into a gauze of orange in the west he ran his hand smoothly down his chest.  No holes, nothing bad.

Still...it still felt like he was empty though.

Chasing

When looking back he couldn't exactly remember why she had started running...just that she did for some reason.

Not that it was unimportant...rather he just knew that there were times that he needed to follow after her and there were times that he didn't.

He remembered how she startled when he had arrived, like a surprise.  But without a smile.  And looked around quickly even though he was the only one around her...it was in the side room off the main portion of the church.  He though he might find her there...an odd intuition but one that he followed and walked up the long driveway until the white steeple came into view.  He saw no cars, but knew that in that town you could walk anywhere.

He opened the main door and looked into the pews...dust modes were in the air as bits of light streamed in from a sun low in Fall.  There was nobody there.  He heard the sound of steps in the adjacent room and turned towards them.  He crossed the doorway and she looked at him.

There had been a lot of words before...shared, crafted...in a close-held moment.  Like water draining from a massive tub they unloaded upon each other until there was nothing left to say...just a little echo.

But the emptying of anything can plague you long after...what new words can be conjured?   What new feelings can be felt?  He thought he knew the answers, felt he could create and keep the freshness of her in a delicate balance...a plucked flower that stayed beautiful long after it should have bent and collapsed.

He was of course very wrong.

And so when she looked up at him and was surprised, she still had nothing to say.  Nothing more to add.  So she departed.  At first she walked slowly but picked up speed as she neared the door...it was the farthest thing from him so he saw her back, her hair swaying slightly side to side...she walked like a model.

She never closed the door but as the grass outside gradually descended towards the road she gently picked up speed until she was in a bit of a loping run.  She ran like she was running from something.  She ran like she never wanted to turn around.  She ran like each step was a word that only increased the distance between them.

He didn't chase her.  She wouldn't have wanted it that way.

Permeate

It is knowing that you are there...a knowledge that allows me to breathe in an air that might be possibly shared by you...

It is a distance, but deceiving...the way a moon looks much closer than it actually is...your proximity is a lot closer than when seen on a map.  Because you permeate me...you fall upon my skin with the ghost of a touch, a distinct tattoo from a grasp.

I do not mind the silent slabs between us...I don't fear the concrete stretch between us...in some ways you are more than a person...a great unwritten book, a collection of poems and portraits...an art display on a private wall in my mind.  Moments captured and remembered...a main reason why you remain exactly the same to me...no difference, no change.

Sometimes you are a great storm...a pattern that permeates my thoughts, disrupting, leaving a vast change in your wake.  And I slowly rebuild, replacing and replenishing...

You are sunlight and oxygen...you are not seen but felt.  You align and mold...meld.  It is the beginning of the day and I put you on like a cloak, to comfort me...to protect me...to remind me mostly.  I wear you in my mind across my shoulders, where I hope I can keep you...and carry you.

At night I do not take you off but rather pull you closer...nestle and clutch you around me.  Hopefully feeling the wrap and the cling of you if only in my mind as you permeate me as I seek to see you in my sleep.

The Inconvenience of Hurricanes

Sure, there is worry...the unknown and the known path of nature that may collide...

There is always some worry in the gap of distance, the gap of time.  The gap of where you once stood, once occupied.  You became a moveable force, your weather patterns alighting upon me...the bright sided mornings when we could spend a moment together...the cloudless sky of an afternoon in a field...the rains and the winds.  I embraced your presence like an afternoon braces for an evening.

But further diminishing my mood was the chance for you to be in slight danger...slight risk.  The absence was even deeper, new moods that weren't familiar.  

Just a word...please, just one word that you are okay.  That you are safe.

It's not a lot of worry...but it just makes the day a little bit brighter knowing that there are no storms between us...real or imagined.

The real ones infinitely worse.

And my helplessness compounded even further.

I miss the you of you...the you of us.

I watch the weather, and wonder if it is raining near you...bringing in some storms to echo outside while you huddle inside...

I wish for you the bright and empty skies...the day freshly scrubbed.  A quiet afternoon.  An evening with coals and the scent of burning wood.

But mostly I just want you to know that I still stare at places...maps...degrees and latitudes of where you might actually and possibly be...and see if I can find myself nearby.

Except on those times when an inconvenient hurricane erupts, pulling me even further away.

A Kiss...the Familiar

Collapse.

Compress.

Let the distance between us descend from feet to inches...let the distance collapse.  Let the eyes guide us in that perfect frame to know exactly where we intend to be.  Let our centrifugal forces align us perfectly as we gently collapse against each other...the weight of the day, the stress of the moments, the heft of being apart tear through the walls and let us collapse into each other equally...finding the perfect angle that we are so familiar with.

Compressing our first very pliable lips into each other like a collision.

Let us collide softly, like two boats that gently feel a tide that drifts them together, the softest brush against each other.  Let us quietly collapse.  Quietly collide.

Comfort.  Let us revert back in time, when the first kisses were curious, seeking.  Complicating and maybe confusing.  Let us know pull forward, when the kiss is comfort...coming to a place so often sought.  Always sought, perhaps never always around...but perfectly familiar when connected.

Let me connect...no.
Let me reconnect with you in a kiss.  A collapse...a compress.  A collision.

Let us join first at our lips and let that kiss linger, our breath still...let the rest of our bodies collapse behind that joining, compress into each other...no longer the two boats gently colliding but rather the way ice melts in bourbon, mixing, intermingling, disintegrating into a combination.

Let the kiss be the introduction into a coming home...a familiar.  A comfort, a collapse.  A giving in, a succumbing to the whatever lies ahead.

Let the collapse compress us together...colliding.  Let it comfort, let it cascade against us, combining. Colluding.  Comparing.

But let us not forget really what it means...despite that familiar comfort...that compression.  What it really means...in that collision.

The craving.

The craving.

Even now,  the distance ascending in not feet or inches but miles and thousands of them...

The craving.

Old Hotels in California

Maybe it's the length of the flight, the delta in the time zones...maybe it's the color of the terrain heading west that becomes more barren and brown, far different from the lush greens and perfectly framed crops that I fly over from East to West.

Maybe it's because I'm supposed to be heading home, but that place was burnt down to the ground...figuratively and literally...it feels a bit like a betrayal.  I committed no crimes in California but I feel guilty when I arrive.  Like maybe I should never have left...like maybe I should have come back and grasped some hands, muddled through conversations...I don't know.

There had been love on the coast, at least in disguise...nights with strange girls who wanted to make love on the cliffs above the Pacific, in deep dark nights when fog rolled in and you could hear the sound of the surf as she breathed in my ear.  But it was like when the fog burned off the next morning in the pureness of a bright planet sun...these girls would dissipate and fade.  Never returning but as ghosts in a fleeting memory.  I think I remember first names...barely...freckles, eyes like blue-linen and the smell of suntan lotions.  But those are in a drawer in my mind, next to mixed tapes and the key from an early BMW.

Maybe it's like an old wound, a broken bone that never quite heals...that reminds you when it's about to rain and it dulls and thuds against some nerve.  I'm not sure...but ultimately California leaves me lonely.

And I think it's because it is evidence that I am even further than you than I could ever be.  It's a continent away, suddenly.  Not a mile or a few.  Not a short drive or time in a plane.

I am far away.  And when the distance between us is this black bejeweled gulf that we don't know how to approach it is a starker distance.  I cannot see a moon knowing it might the same time that you are watching.  I'm on the other side.

A side I have been on before.  A part, apart.

Knowingly, willingly separating is like a reminder of how a day can separate us in its minutes, and in its mileage.  Distance is vague...it can be a hundred feet in a rain or a thousand feet in the sun...if I cannot see you I may as well be some place very far.

But in California I know I am far...a deliberate distance, that I have chosen to undertake, even if just for a few days.

Perhaps it doesn't even really matter...perhaps distance is a drug, euthanizing...deadening...not allowing any sort of pain or memory or fondness or drifting into memory occur.  Distance can be a narcotic, an addicting one.

I feel far from you quite often...mostly in the mornings on waking...and then again in the head down upon the pillow time when I get to blink slowly to sleep.

But in this great distance I feel...

nah, I fear...

that I will feel this sensation more acutely because I am in a strange place...a strange place where I was born.  But never really loved.

No, I saved that for elsewhere.  Some place that tonight is far, far away.

The ways the ocean sounds

It feels different the first time you hear it when you just arrive...the syncopation of the ocean, it is more of a jazz tune as it ebbs and it flows...

It acclimates you...it immerses you in the wind, the scent of the sea, the sand...the ocean is unchanged.  It is exactly, almost, as to when it was first formed.  What you see now is what has been seen for ages....ageless in its gaze.

It is complicated in colors...that change beneath full sun or darkening storms.  The blues become browns and greens...at night it reflects whatever is lucky enough to stand over it.

The ocean is sinew, muscular and molding...it cares not a whit if you join it.

It purrs with low tide and exults at high.  It lets the moon set its mood.

It strokes the sand like a lover, pulling on it, streaming against it, sliding down past the slight incline the way you clutch clothing and gently remove it.

It quarrels against you, nudging you.  It gathers at your knees and moves past you.

I hear such sounds as I remember the ocean...I remember it as complicated patterns and beautiful landscapes...picturesque mornings and indescribable evenings.  

I remember no such equal.  I remember nothing even close.

I remember an ocean and I immediately think of you.

Sorrows

Have another drink...at least one before you go.

A pause...then a no.  No, it wouldn't be appropriate.

There's nothing appropriate at this point...it's well past that.

I know.

So it may as well be a toast...a drink... let's commiserate.  Let's imbue our senses with liquid courage.

I don't need courage now...

I know.

What do you need?

I don't know...it's a little confusing.  It's hard to balance.  It's hard.

Things that are great usually are.  That is what makes them great.

(Silence)

I envy the blind.

What?

I am a bit envious of those who cannot see...they have to rely on touch...the spoken word.  The scent.

Why would you think that.

Because the image of you is forever imprinted on me.  I may never touch you again, never smell you again...never hear you.  But goddamn have I seen you.

And is that a bad thing?

Only if you never appear again.

(silence)

Mostly When It Rains

Not because of nothing...but it just feels different.

There is the usual missing...the empty bin feeling of something that is gone.

The polite pull of something that has stranded, moved away.  A phone picked up...set back down.

Perhaps it is the washing away, a cleansing...removing.  There is the fresh scrubbed sky, the ground is awash in sparkles and the air is perfect.

There may even be a rainbow, a brief fluorescent reminder of beauty against a storm.

But none of that really matters.

The sky could be fucking purple, a gorgeous glaze that is remarkably unique, unseen ever and like an alien landscape it would be captivating in its presence...

But in that color reflected afternoon, I wouldn't care.

Soaked, still wet from the downpour and likely cold in the clothes, I know that mostly I'd be empty.  I'd be solo.

I'd be wooden.

I'd be stone.

There would still be a heartbeat, blood flowing through veins...clinically alive, lovingly dead.

Listening to the last drops still falling from trees, from eaves of houses, watching the storm slowly move away...stranding me even further, leaving me who was once alone even lonelier.

Autumn

Somewhere, someone was burning leaves...the distinct scent, a delicious aroma, a reminder, a harbinger of cooler nights and graying days.

Trees reluctantly unclenching their leaves, like a lover saying goodbye, a slip and a spiral downwards to join just the other bits and pieces of them that they used to own.

He walked along the trees where the leaves had just barely covered the road...hiding the dark cement that was rippled with ruts and coated them in a gorgeous weave of colors.

She had covered up his holes as well, his faults and his blemishes that stained him.  She gathered and layered over him, her bright and eye-catching parts blotting out his ruts, his uneven patches.  He laid beneath her, letting her envelope him, letting her scent linger on him, her gentle weight just barely indent him.

She made him smooth, she made him plausible.  She masked him with her arms extended and drew him in.  She bound him, there were no wounds that could emerge.

And at night, with a crisp air that felt like a slight stab when sharply inhaled, she warmed and invited.  She reflected blood moons and harvest nights.  She dabbed frost on in the morning, and sometimes a pale sun would gently melt it, her clinging against him taking a more intimate shape.

He thought of this as he walked, sometimes the leaves crunching under him and splintering into pieces.  He smelled the scent of burning leaves, and it reminded him of her perfume.

He had many reminders...but this was one of his favorites.

There is no Last Ferry

He always tried to time his departures when you could just barely make out the Church Tower at Jamestown...a sight he had seen in his visits but still was a bit haunting....300 year old stones assembled for people to worship.  He knew something about worship...but for him it was more in the form of a person and not a building.

He was on the 2nd deck observation deck, the ferry trailing a bit of a muddy wake as the recent storms had churned the river and the late afternoon-almost evening air had a slight chill like it was starting to sense Autumn.  He felt the beginning of some ache like he always did at this point...going past Glass House, starting to move into the deeper water.  

He began to miss her the moment she turned.  While she was still in his view he started to sense the brief splintering of her presence and like a spill he started to feel an emptiness starting to spread.

It tended to peak when he could see the Church tower, which is why he always departed in a bit of the twilight.  And it just felt like a reminder...of things that can endure.  Things that can stand through bits of time.  Long times.

It sometimes made him feel better, sometimes it didn't.  When she was with him his eyes scoured her, recording memories of her face, her look.  He wanted to pull her inside of him, to capture her in her perfect state and preserve it.  He tried to remember that she made the length of time irrelevant, that regardless of how long she was there it was never long enough.  

And he couldn't quite remember how she looked because each time he saw her after an absence she was exactly prettier than before...and perhaps that was the absence and his memory colliding but he always noticed something new...there was always something fresh.  

Which made the departures even more maddening.  

Soon the faint outline of the Church Tower faded against the blackening backdrop of trees and the rest of Virginia.  It felt like he had just closed his eyes.

He furiously tried to remember exactly what she looked like...how she looked like to him.

What Constitutes Beauty

It wasn't a question, rather it was a declarative.

Beauty is generally seen in presence...I invoke it in absence.  I love the beautiful wake you leave behind in a departure...a leaving.  Being present, being in front of me, the slight rise of your breathing and the scent of a lotion and then...then nothing.  But not nothing.  An impression.  A fingerprint.  But left somewhere upon me indelibly.

The velcro-like pull as you walk away.

It's like the need for a drink and finding only empty bottles.

It is a draw.  It is a kiss at prom.  It is a heart rate increase.  It is comfort.

There is a reason we kiss with our eyes closed...to feel the part of another that is best imagined.  Best left to the colors of the brain, and letting our mouths decide direction.  Our arms to figure out connection.

Beauty is felt.  Not seen.

You are quite beautiful...to the eye, and to the scene and to the world.

But you are what is quite frankly the substance of beauty when you are not seen, except perhaps in the bright tug of a memory.

Circles

At times she was a warm iron, her heat emanating from deep within.

But at times he felt she had sadness, balloons within her that he could sometimes prick with a comment, and it would slowly empty and she would be rid of it.  For a moment.

Like now, on the porch as an evening devolved into a muddy mixture of storm clouds and darkness.  Ugly colors in a humid evening.

I just wanted you to know that it is in these...these little brief moments that I feel like I am inside of you...inside of your mind and I'm simply merely trying to calm it.

He announced it as she sat behind him...he on the porch stairs with a drink in his hand.  His comment had been with his bourbon outstretched in front of him, gesturing that the horizon was collapsed into a tiny pocket of this small house in the southern county.

Her voice, usually in reactions to his comments, was quiet.

I know.  I know I'm not able to share whatever you call it...you and your writer words.  

He turned to her, a shape in the evening...legs together and tapering up to her hair and her face.  It was the worst lighting...in a bright space her eyes were such toffee colors against an angled face.  It was something a bit mesmerizing while expressive.  Here, in the shadows of a night about to commence he couldn't read her.

I don't need you to share.  

I think you do.  I think you need to hear it.

He nodded slightly, knowing she couldn't see it.  But he knew that she could strip him like a sapling, carving him in layers and keeping bits of him to collect and preserve.  He couldn't do that to her...she was like an iron that required him to warm her...to warm her from the inside and perhaps maybe warm her to the point where she exposed herself a little bit.

I don't necessarily need to hear it.  I guess I just need to feel it.  And unfortunately I probably need to see it to feel it.  And that requires being here.  He said this as he mounted the steps and walked briefly in front of her.  She had a slight habit of murmuring when she wanted to say something but kept it closed inside of her.  So he started again:

But here's the thing.  I am slowly realizing that I don't need to be here either.  So long as I know you're here...so long as I know you're somewhere...some place.  Just knowing that you're in an evening and so am I...I'm learning that even that small common piece is enough for me.

Meaning what? she said.

Meaning...I don't know...it's like a presence.  A prayer.  It's the sense that you are there...that you and I are maybe thinking the same thing despite distance.  I don't know.  It's a bit crazy.  But I sense you.  I sense your presence.  I feel the weight of you.  Like your walk, your driving in a car to work...I feel it.  I know you're there.  

Why the prayer comment?

Because you pray for something you want.  Sometimes you pray for something you need...I don't know. Perhaps I need you.  I definitely want you.  It, at times, is hard to tell which.

Quiet in an evening, the sawing noise of crickets and the insects of a marsh country signaling the start of their music in the dark.

I just want you to know that I find that sometimes you are sad.  And I just want to erase it.  Maybe not perfectly like it's gone forever.  But for the moment I want you to not be thinking about that...and maybe realize that I find the perfect architecture in you...that all is so perfectly fine so long as you are somewhere in the day.  And maybe in those long hours I might get a chance to be with you and just share the rest of it with you for a tiny brief moment.

How brief a moment?

As brief as a kiss.  

Fingernail Moons

When the night is like an attic, with the heat just stale and barren and cloying and surrounding...like a gray red warmth in an evening that is just an annoyance.

A thumbnail moon slides a sly smile across a dusk.  It is reminiscent...does it want to be full, does it want to be pretty?  Does it stand out in the sky?

You sure did.  But not just a mere moon...you were unfortunately the sun.  The center.  You could bring an eclipse but you were always there in sweet-heat perfection.

You painted skies in pastels and evenings in oranges.  You tanned and you darkened.  You boiled inside of me, a source of energy, a bit of everything I woke to and slept to.

You were a blinding, tear-inducing stare that I longed for, went blind searching for as I gazed and gazed and gazed.  So much so that when I closed my eyes I could still see you.

I could feel you, on my forehead, on my cheeks...if left alone the tiny bubbles of blood coming to a boil.

You were a time clock of my day, a perspective.  I could tell it was morning and I could tell when it was evening.  I could tell when you were sad, or just somber.  It was full effect.  It was there even if in shade.

You were the light, pretty such pretty light in a corner of my world where you were the single largest part of the day.  You might have been somebody's lantern, somebody's companion but you were my afternoon heat.  My high noon.

In these evenings, when the long ago sun illuminates a fingernail moon, I think of the absence.  Where did the rest of it go?

It's a smoking hole in a dark that is barely lit by the skim of light.  It looks like a wry smile...of a time when you were such a center in a time when we were we.

And now it just reminds me of where the rest of you went.

High & Dry

Most days it just felt oppressive...the weight of an afternoon waiting to finally tip over and collapse in a spew of rain and thunder.

It was mid-summer, the perfectly balanced part of the season where the halfway point felt like the rest might last twice as long.

Each day felt the same...the exact and mirrored day as the one before...and most likely the same as tomorrow.

She was gone and her absence felt like a hole in his day.  There was no sweet relief of a brewing and darkening storm bringing some reckoning to an afternoon of high heat and humidity.  There was no stir of breeze.  It was still...a frozen time of oppressing warmth that clung to him like a shrunken sweater.  It moved with him, stayed with him.

She had done neither.

She had taken her rough-river colored eyes and slid sideways away.

She had disassembled her presence in her own quiet way...not loudly or disturbing but like a blink.

The sun doesn't seem to move, but he's sure it does.  Slight subtle movement across a sky.

She had emerged in his sky like one of the early stars, while the light is waning but brilliantly fighting for his attention, his gaze.  Only to disappear in the morning when the dawn blotted out the tiny light. Extinguished came to his mind.

It was hot again today...it was the same as yesterday.

Reunion

She woke up in a familiar room in a familiar bed…the sun just a bit of orange gauze through the blinds on the window.  Her stirrings were slow as she extended her full length beneath the sheets, stretching and finding the cool parts at the bottom of the bed.  She heard the slight squeal of the wooden stairs as somebody descended…her mom, perhaps…or a brother or sister.  She couldn’t tell but it was one of them as they were all here…a place that she supposed was home but from a long time ago.  It felt different now…probably because she felt differently too…it was a warm comfort, as much as the weight of the linens upon her now…she reached slightly to the desk beside her where a piece of paper was creased and folded.  It was of sturdy stock, almost like parchment and she held it now, her finger rubbing alongside it, feeling the rather rough edge.  From below she heard the sounds of a morning being constructed, the bright bang of a pan and the scooting of chairs…the first scent of coffee invaded slowly and she sat slightly up in the bed, pulling the pillows together behind her.  His tee shirt was loose around her, and she pulled the cotton up and could barely make out a bit of his scent.  It smelled of an evening, some smoke from the bonfire and she inhaled slightly.  The sun was yellowing, the room changing slight colors and the noises downstairs were growing louder, the clear drones of conversations, a cup being set on a table and it sounded like some of the kids were now joining the fray as a few peals of laughter were heard.  She unfolded the paper, again wondering why he had bothered to type it…his answer had been “because you cannot read my writing.”  She smiled briefly at that, her hair falling a little in her face and she brushed it away.

I dreamed of you last night…I dreamt of you.

It’s a rare and distant chance to see you in my sleep, to be sweetly and gently aware of you and let everything blur behind it.

It is always hateful waking…the pull of you away and the sudden realization of a day starting without you in it…I rage at the sun, the early sky, holding onto the silk memories of your face as I try to fall back asleep, willing myself to dream of you, to see you.  To be here now with you.

It is a sweet reunion.

 

Below she heard somebody ascending the stairs and then a knock on the door.  She folded the paper and set it beside her. 

She got up, answering the door with a slight smile and began her day.

 

First Drink of an Evening

The first drink of an evening was often how he liked to imagine the progression of her against his mind...the slight anticipation, the comforting expectation...the first sweet moments that dulled the day, erased sharp edges and warmed him from the very first kiss of the glass against his lips. 

After a day of chores, the mundane...people, slightly annoying decisions...the taste of bureaucracy, and the lack of unmoving moments in a chair in an office...that first tumble of ice into crystal was compelling...a clarion call to hurry the mind and shift to a different place. 

And while that implies an addiction...well, I guess it just may be. 

But in a good way...a welcoming way, familiar.  Holding hands, a remembrance.  Quiet moments spent together with barely a noise.  These were the arc of thoughts as the arc of an arm brought a drink to his mouth and he savored the first bright tastes of the drink.

The drink was a toast to her...unspoken, silent but completely elaborative and deserving.  He simply toasted the way she made him feel...and that feeling was quietly and subtly the same way the first drink of an evening made him feel.

And the irony is that the second drink, as much as the first one made him feel that agonizingly glorious familiar way she made him feel...started to remind him that she wasn't there...and that the dulling soothing powers of the alcohol were patching up pieces of him that she had plucked from him and kept.  With the crushing weight of her distance slowly numbed by the distance between his drink and the next one.

Slowly, like watching the way an evening turns from its blue tones to grayish ones...and then you turn and it's black outside.  That first drink now a memory...but she remains blazing and on fire in front of him despite his very best efforts to let her slip coolly into the evening instead of burning that part of him that remained untouched by his best efforts to not let her linger in his mind.

Storm Stoppin' Stare

She had a way, a view.

A look.

She regarded.

She sometimes started a word, a fragment of a sentence and then would smile and stop.  She wouldn't let it out.

She had mischief, fire.  Character.  A weakness for bourbon and proximity...her protests were easily eroded with a well-placed kiss and a clutch of her tailbone pulled towards me.

She had a laughter that revealed...high pitched if truly amused, low and throaty if being polite.  She spoke in a southern tongue and let words emerge only if allowed.

She played with her hair, fussing at the ends, making sure the strands were straight.  Nobody, really hardly anybody knew that when wet they curled and they were natural. 

He was so very pleased he knew such a thing.

She, despite her so infrequent words, conjured up billions...the ways she walked, a slight lean forward as she sped her way through life...the way she picked at a salad...applied gloss to her already softened lips.  The way she put up a glaze that said she was all business...

She was layers.

She loved the beach...loved the sand.  She loved the arc of a sun, the glimpse of a moon...colors in-between.  She remained. 

And every so often, when I could find her...join her...and I caught that stare of hers...when she was melding alongside of me, a folding of limbs and I could feel her heartbeat and I could hear the hitch in her breathing...I held crushed in the stare of hers...unblinking, unstopping, consuming me and penetrating me to hold onto her, be into her, and stay with her.

It was palpable...

mostly remembering it as she was departing, when her brief stare glanced against me and was soon looking to where she was going.

A Blister

So the hug had come and gone and now they were staring at whatever came next.

What, she had stated, watching him, remarking him and stepping back a few feet from where she had been...which was literally in his arms but was now a bit of a distance.

Nothing...he started...it's just increasingly difficult to let you go...and not like a release...rather, it's just like a departure.

She was still pretty close...close enough for him to grasp the scent of her potions, the hairspray...the tiny elements of her make-up that he could detect.  He more or less detected her as much as he saw her...she invaded his senses far more than just the visual.  She was as much an allergen, a pathogen...she invaded his breathing and infused herself into him...all without her knowing.

I'm doing all that I can...I suppose the best that I can.

I know.

But you...she hesitated...which she did when she muscled words out of her mouth...you think I'm not?

Clear bait.  He wasn't going to completely bite.

There is some friction here...he started...like when something is very comfortable when it first fits...and you wear it so well...you forget it's even there...but after awhile...some time....well, the bit of friction is enough to raise a welt...a small irritation...and then it becomes something bigger.

Am I that irritation?  She ventured and moved her head a bit...an annoyance. 

God no...no.  It's in these departures...these disconnections...these moments when we take the together parts and move them into the "well, these are no longer together" parts and it chafes and it rubs hard against leather and it just causes us to feel a pain point.

She looked at him and her eyes were full of extraordinary understanding...like they usually were...but her brain, and her synapses and her words were carefully sculpted...they had the benefit of reason and they were blurbs in the air between them...he rightfully wondered if they were completely naked at that moment, aligned and intertwined if her vocabulary would change...he thought about that a moment.

Are you saying I'm that irritation? she asked again.

He inhaled and let a smooth long peel come out of him...hoping to explain that yes, indeed she was the source of his skin against skin pronouncement...that she was the rubbing edge of a sun against a horizon...she was the invading light of a summer moon against a chalkboard black sky...she was the sifting of sands against a copper tin bowl seeking gold...she was always friction because she was the counterbalance....the weather combination that produced storms. 

No...I'm sorry.  Not that type of friction.

Well than what type am I?

He paused for a tiny second...you know the static sparks you see when you pull up the sheets?  When you are just about to descend into sleep and you have one last muscle memory to quickly tug and allow the spread of cotton across you?  And that few bits of kinetic energy that camera flashes in tiny pieces? 

Yeah, I've done that.

Well...that is you...at least the resistance that I think you cause.