Bourbon Eyes

Funny enough he knew the colors and even in the dark he knew where her stare was alighting.

I love it when you are tired, your eyes just slowly blinking, just registering like a heart beat that I can see....

I don't like tired eyes she had replied, even as she looked away, and he could sense her body relaxing, folding into itself.  Seated on the couch.  Sprawled.

I like to think of the liquid behind your stare...I like its effect.

She turned to him, unblinking...she held him in it and he felt like her hands had reached upon his cheeks and pulled him a tiny bit forward.  A slight illusion, for sure, but he felt drawn and he felt he had let go of a railing.

Like how?

Well, he started....it's a bit of a reminder.

A reminder?

Yeah....a muscle memory.  Like when I am tired, and I'm shutting down functions--

Functions?

Well yeah, like thinking about work...or bills...or shoveling snow...and I just let it be...like I'm taking down a bunch of art off of walls--

What?

You know, like when you walk into a museum room and you've got tons of pictures on walls and you cannot focus because there are so many interesting paintings...

That sounds like ADD...

It is...probably...

It certainly sounds like it is...

Anyways, my point....my point is when I've taken down all these measures, these functions....these distracting works of art that are part of my thinking...when I strip it down to a single piece of focus it is the calming and altogether soothing effect of you staring at me.  Maybe not staring...but maybe just looking...and without blinking.

That sounds like staring.

No...it's an almost stare...if I focus too long one of us blinks and it kind of restores the tension.

Tension?

Yeah...tension...like a quiet waiting for something...or a word.  I don't know...it's weird.

It's definitely weird.

I know....but it's like a drink...it's way more than a sip...but it's maybe a second drink of bourbon, a nice pour that is coursing through my body, warming...relaxing.  When I'm tired that's the effect you have when I look at you and find you looking back.

Only when you're tired?

He sat back and regarded her...she wasn't quite staring but she was regarding him back.  Reflecting.  He imagined it amused her.

No...unfortunately for me...it is the consistent single effect when you gaze and I catch it and I let it pound a nail into my brain with your impact.

A nail?

I've moved on from bourbon...I've moved on from the gentle soothing part and into a much more connected tissue portion.

A nail?  That's not exactly soothing.

He let out a slight laugh.  You're of course so right.  But I suppose it is the truth...that when you let me see you looking directly at me...hard...directly...it makes me stay stock still...unmoving...and I guess I just await for what you want to do to me next...as I stay firmly in your grip.

Well...if it renders you a bit helpless then perhaps there is something I can do to shut you up.

She moved closer and in her closing he saw her eyes doing the same and so he let his fall shut and let her lips find his and in his mind he was struck by his inability to move and yet the tension he felt slipping slowly away...and he imagined the smile in her eyes that perfectly matched the color of bourbon.

Simple Things

He remembered the debate, remembered it with clarion clarity...how nothing would ever besmirch her skin...nothing could taint it.  Not a needle, nor a color.

He didn't argue too vehemently...in his mind her pastels and natural colors were all he needed...but it was the foreign object that was intriguing.

The tattoo was a scar of a time...spent together...yes, maybe without all faculties, but nevertheless a moment in time.  A Polaroid.  A snapchat.  A fixture.

She didn't want it anywhere exposed...she felt it was past her.  She wanted privacy, and intimacy.  He wanted trophies.

He tried to explain to her in the hundreds of feet of her smooth and delicate skin that a few inches wouldn't make a hell of a difference.  It was a tiny fissure.  An invasion.

She had protested, and she had declined.  In the end, she sat watching him as he put herself on him in permanent ink.

But he possessed just the tiniest of secrets, just the tiniest of shadows that nobody could ever see...and so he smiled at the permanence he perceived that she saw with the colors.

She had invaded him so long ago...she had clung to and possessed parts of him that weren't rightfully hers but that she had clasped and grasped and clutched and now held firmly against her...and he allowed and acquiesced and acknowledged...most of it in the middle, most of it just adjacent to the part where she sometimes laid her head and could hear the distant echo of the thing that she was gradually consuming. 

The tattoo was not being inscribed by somebody from the outside...rather, in his mind, it was the simple small gesture that of all the things she possessed of his that there was now a tiny mark on him that showed the outside world just a hint of her spilling out. 

And the small inches of it were nowhere in the world comparable to the vast spaces she commanded.