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.