Afterwards

Afterwards the house was quiet.  The noise dissipated and there was the soothing sound of being inside while it sleeted outside, the tiny drops of ice seeming to sizzle on the tin patio roof.

The discarded wrapping paper strewn about, varying degrees of gifts stacked and sorted, and there was a peaceful chaos to the landscape...

Gift-giving or gift-receiving is a curious mystery...please guess what I am presenting to you...please know that I thought about this before buying...at times gifts become rote, and you get exactly what the person asked for...others are darling mysteries, trying to surprise the intended.

Protected by the thinnest of paper and perhaps the tightest row of ribbon, these gifts become revealings in an instant.  You know rather quickly if you appreciate...like...or love.

She was one of those darling mysteries.

He never knew what the outcome would be...her clothed in a warm winter coat, or in just the flimsiest of shirts...a red sweater or nothing at all.  He was always guessing...wondering what thoughts she was presenting...what accommodations to him...seeing her was always a delight...and from there?  Who knew...where would it lead?  What might happen next?

These were the greatest reveals that filled him and made each arrival come with such anticipation.

And only in her departures did he realize the despair of watching a gift break apart in his hands.
It was like that every time...afterwards.

Waiting in Santa's Line

He heard her before he actually saw her...she was just talking to her daughter as they stood behind him in line.  He barely heard her, with the sound of Christmas music droning out most of the noise in the store.

The line wound its way through the store, and people held their jackets in their hands, sweating in the warmth of the mall and the hundred of fellow shoppers doomed to wait the interminable distance to see Santa.  He was up there, somewhere...

But her voice was able to be heard...southern, soft.  Almost like a tiny song that floated a little higher than the Christmas tunes...he tried to slide glance at her, half turning as though observing the depth of the line, the length of it.  She was leaning down, her hair falling into her face as she unzipped her daughter's jacket.  She said a few more words and he heard them clearly.

Butter slowly melting over the heat of cast iron.  That's what he imagined listening to her.  He turned back to face front, impatient now, frustrated.  He didn't want to be obvious and turn all the way around.

He fussed with his son's hair, scare-crow like, most likely from his woolen cap.  He wasn't sure why, but he felt like he knew her.  Felt like he had seen her before.

The line slowly moved, the children embarking and disembarking from Santa's lap.  The surge of the crowd bumping them slightly as they tried to pass and move through the line and the the shoppers in the mall.  A few kids were crying, toddlers, beyond impatient.

I know how you feel kid, he muttered.

Suddenly the little girl behind him dropped a mitten and it slid past them and landed in from of him.  It was red, with a tiny bead on it that was white.  He reached down and picked it up, holding it like an offering.  And he turned.

She regarded him for a second, a tilt of her head.  She was even lovelier than he had imagined, and he had to break his stare for a second so he wouldn't be just foolish in his rudeness.  He turned towards the little girl and held out her mitten.  She grabbed it  and thanked him.

He had a bit of a choice.  Return his gaze back to the lady or turn back to the front of the line.

He returned to face the front, his face warming as he felt her stare onto the back of him.

He felt a small tap on his shoulder, arced his head a little bit and she had closed the gap between them, almost like about to make a whisper.


Thank you, she said and he faced her again, this time even closer.  The music was in between songs and it was very quiet so he heard it very well.  He nodded...her eyes merrily watching him.

They both smiled and returned to their prior places, the sounds starting up again and he felt a burning as he focused on staring ahead and hoping that Santa would take his damn sweet time.

safe

Safe.

Near, the distance of a kiss.
Collarbones touching, a rising from a breath.  I can feel your smile.

A cottony silence...not absolute...a rustle of a sheet, a slight clearing of the throat.  A blink, the eyes adjusting to growing light.

Warmth...the warmth that gathers in the night against a sleep, and puddles in pockets and spills out as we adjust ourselves against each other in a morning.

Safe, locked doors and drawn curtains...time becomes just a color of the morning...varying, moving but not hurried.

Hair askew, no mirrors yet, but comfort in the complete stare and kindness felt in the touch...kindness...appreciation.  No demands, just surrender...acceptance.

Nothingness.  Everything.  All at the same time.

The segue from sleep to this relaxed awakening...childlike, comforted.

The willingness to say anything...say everything.  Because I know I am safe.

Long Airport Walkways

There is such a willingness to subscribe to enduring the distance when the destination is ultimately you.

I wander as you sleep...your horizontal body aligned to the horizontal walkways I trudge upon, my steps coming nowhere close to where you are...rather I will need a man-made machine to fly me closer.

So my walk has no purpose, except to remind me that I am awake and you are likely not.

Are you dreaming?  Are you discovering in your sleep?  Are you remembering?

Somewhere out from this speck of airport there is snow...not here.  But out there, falling in a reminder of cold climates and mid-Fall storms.

Not here...the night is tepid, the warmth of bath water.

Out there is rain, but not here.  No delays or impact to this perfectly hewn night.  It is a perfect night to travel.

But in beds where there is snow lovers cling and clutch to each other, beneath blankets and wools, warming each other with their embrace.  In beds where there is rain lovers listen to the whir of the sounds on the roof...the white noise relaxing them, drawing them closer.  Maybe a fire is still spitting and blinking orange and black embers as it dies in a library fire-place.

Not here...the perfect weather lies out there in the blackness...I'm vertical and you are not here at all.

DNA

The plane arrived late, in a rain and he was almost in the last row nearest the bathroom and surrounded by kids and first time travelers.  He put his earbuds in and found a favorite song and closed his eyes against the seat, knowing it would be minutes before he was moving again.

Planes.

Planes and hotel rooms were his world.  Cities and time zones.  Passing through.  His mind was time-stamped and riddled with the scent of airports.

But for one brief moment he had been with her.  Held her.  For a moment his world was the size of a king-sized bed and his universe was the color of sheets and her eyes.  She had drifted into his, aligned and shared.  

She brought a summer day into the week when it was fall.  

For one night it was hearing the night noise of crickets and peep frogs...the sound of a ferry churning against the waters on the James River, the noise of moths whirring against a screen door under a light.

She brought a warmth to a day that was spitting cold rain and red taillights in traffic.

He remembered a time when she had asked to wear his tee shirt.  He was standing there in the morning, hair tussled from sleep.  It was a benign request but she was topless and the morning outside was just a gray and people were still starting their commutes and boiling coffee and she was naked and near.

He pulled it over his head and she swam her arms through the holes and allowed it to fall on her...it wasn't tight on her but her nipples poked through and he wished he had given it to her earlier.

It smells like you, she said and lay back down on the pillows.  Outside it was yellowing and a sun was competing with clouds and the rain had stopped and the puddles were shimmering in the moist light and it was still quiet in the room but his eyes were fixated on her.  And she was staring back.

The plane was still crowded as people tried their best to unlodge their suitcases packed in the overhead bin.  His song was replaced with another, and he forwarded it to find one he liked.

He remembered when he was packing up his items, and his shower kit was being put into its bag with the razor and the cologne.  He glanced into the sink and saw a hair of hers had fallen, perhaps in her departure, as she re-assembled and re-acquainted herself with her morning it had tumbled off of her as she brushed it and primped in the mirror.  It was a stark reminder that she had been there.  

It wasn't just something his mind had conjured up.  He held the hair in his hand before letting it fall back into the sink, swallowed by the water and into the drain.  

It departed down the small hole in the sink. 

 He walked out of the small hole in the plane, emerging and remembering like it was just yesterday that he was with her.

Ante Meridiem

There are beautiful spaces to watch the sun emerge...high on cliffs in crystal cool mornings unfiltered with any fog or obstruction.

An ocean, a perfect line on the horizon.

On an airplane, where the entire sky is available, and explodes through the tiny windows and illuminates the interior like spotlights.

In a city, where the buildings shred the light into prisms, narrowed into colored slots on the street.

I prefer just the gradual lightening of the room, as the sheets start to whiten in the paleness waning through the curtains, the way your features start to become more defined and I can finally see the colors of your eyes.

Phantom Limb

She glanced quickly over her right shoulder as she departed, the words pale in the morning air beside the door.

It was a pull.  An extraction.  Disconnecting from something alive and humming with energy.

Her departure pulled skin, tore muscle, left him in the void.  A blown out candle.

It didn't matter that the rest of the day was amongst strangers, in the mist of a blown out hurricane crossing the country.  The sun was just a white spot, a light behind the sheets, no warmth or cream-colored afternoon for him.

Rather, low clouds narrowing the views, diminishing the heights and pushing him further downwards.

Like pulling an arm out of its socket, like the sound a light bulb makes when it burns out.  Perhaps unscrewed slowly out of a lamp.  Either way, she was in him and then she was gone.

But he could still feel her there.  And it hurt and he kept trying to soothe it and it was invisible.

Pearls

Friction.

In my jet-lagged mind even the tiniest of thoughts is enough to be an irritant.  Enough to distract and bounce like a loose ping-pong ball against bad angles.  I'd rather just shut down bits and pieces until I have nothing but a sand laden pattern that requires no colors or inquisitions...just nothing.

In my horizon there are colors and lights that need no attention...just a simple nod towards something that my brain can register.  Okay, I see you.  I recognize the sight or sound.  I process.

But instead I'd prefer your invasion...a thought of you like a tiny sand in the oyster.  I want you to rub against me, rub against a frayed brain that is trying to shut down. I want you to be the light left on downstairs...forcing me to turn and go back and acknowledge.

I want you to be the cramp in the foot, the itch on my side...I want you to remind me not to go to sleep but rather stay and play...I want you to be the sand in the sheets from a stay on the beach.  I want reminders.

I want to feel the grate of you against me, even if you are merely a thought of you.  A tiny, small piece of an idea.  A description.  A memory.  A reminder.

Sand in the sock.  Sand in the shoe.  A grain of sand against an entire black slate floor.  Doesn't matter.

Just unique.  Just you.  Fighting against me.  I feel you in my sleep, I feel you in my walk.

And your constant rub, your constant against me creates a sensation.  A constant sense of whatever you bring makes us beautiful.  Maybe only I can see as it resides inside of me...but I can see it.  I can sense it.

You...your friction, creating the perfect pearl of what I hope to find and what you add to me with the simple and constant allowance of us being together.

nothingness

It is a day splintered into minutes and moments and clogged with information and voices and conversations.

It is nighttime when I can dissolve into nothingness.

The weight in the front of my mind still heavy, the eyes increasingly tiring...an odd ache that I never noticed before nor remembered how it may have even occurred.

I reach for a glass and ask it to fill me up...take the liquid and its cold ice and warm me...numb me.  Persuade me to push back the littered contents of my brain and sweep them into a closet...at least for a few minutes...let me become calm.

Let me find a quiet.

Let me descend into a comfort.  Let me block out the world.  Visuals.  Let me erase the colors and leave but the grays...let me allow the fog to swallow me slowly and absorb me in.

Let me unclench my hand.  Let me make my own bed and lie in it.

Let me become salt in a glass of water.  Let me liquify and melt and change the flavor a bit.

Let me strive to find a comfortable state...let me find an exquisite position.

Let me work hard at reminding myself that in all of this nothingness that you quite frankly are an everything...and let me let that secret knowledge pull me into a smile and a find that position that I crave.

Sips

He stirred the colors into his coffee until they went from the color of her eyes to the color of her skin in the height of a summer being bronzed in a tan.

The windows were spotted with condensation, the outside air already humid...the air still cold in his room.  High above the city where he was a stranger.

His travel was a broken wheel, lumbering across the country from place to place, an uneven balance to his hours and time zones...never enough sleep, never enough time.  He sipped from the warm cup, trying to figure out what hour it was where she was sleeping...or maybe awake.

There were times when it was just an ache...other times when it was just a bruise.  He felt plucked.  Pulled away.  Time for them was measured in seconds...rarely hours.  Flip the hour glass over once...that's all we have.  Each time like a perfect eclipse...they aligned, sun and moon and then it was past.

The beauty of such passing is she never changed...she was this constant light.  She was in the full grip of his heart and his many, many thoughts of her.  They widened his day, brightened up the bedside...a slice of art that he could conjure up.  She was mystery and knowledge.  Salt and sweet.  A contradiction at times...impossible to read.  But gentle.  Soft.  Feminine.

He saw her so infrequently, interacted with her occasionally.  Yet as he took these tiny sips of her they both satiated him and made her more addictive.

He finished the last of his coffee, tasting the tiny bits of sugar at the bottom of his cup and he remembered that they reminded him of her.

Autumn

What do you want me to do with...those letters?

She heard her mom from above her, upstairs in her former room...she had returned after graduating from college to the home where she was raised.  And now her mom was dismantling her youth, putting it into one box at a time.

She knew exactly what her mom would be holding...a blue shoebox, with letters written in pencil and pen, a familiar cursive sometimes barely legible addressing her name and home.  Some had been hand delivered, in an afternoon of high school...some had Foreign Post Office stamps from when they had been sent from a far off war.  She knew they were a time-stamp of her life, the last years of high school, the full years of college...and they were efforts.  Efforts or perhaps reminders, she couldn't remember...standing at the foot of the stairs, a box of stuffed animals peering out at her.

She heard her mom's footsteps creaking towards the top of the landing...in her hand she held the shoe box and a question on her face...it was like a bucket of memories in those letters.  She knew she would never re-read them...didn't need to.  The themes were consistent and the same.

Just put them back in my closet Mom.  

Her mom raised an eyebrow and returned back to her dismantling.  She knew she was keeping it as something comforting...and maybe someday she wouldn't need those bit of paper and ink.  But for now she just watched her mom return to her old room and drop the box in her closet with a noise she could feel.

Outside her front door the leaves were just trying to pull out the last greens of color they could muster...the early mornings had been cool, with a little fog.  The James River was the color of the earth, dark and rich and when riding the ferry she had to wear a sweater and a scarf.

Coming home after the final summer semester she knew she had to leave this small southern place, needed to find something besides the flat tones near Waverly.  But she had spent so many autumns here, so many times she had embraced the fall, the start of school, returning to friends...

He had been a little bit of that return each time...she'd see him in the hallways...after that one summer when they had blossomed for a bit and then school and others had intertwined...she hadn't pushed him away...she just didn't pull him along.  He was there like initials in a tree, reminding her but not cloying.  He had started the letters, brief simple notes to just let her know that she looked good in a dress...or had an awesome tan.  They were intimate, but immature...but she kept them.

He had volunteered to go serve in the military at a time when others were raising their hand to join...she had wondered at his decision, had told him of his foolishness...they weren't boyfriend and girlfriend...not since that summer long ago.    But each Halloween they ended up at her porch, a candle burning on a protective plate and they would talk...long into the dark.  They were familiar.  They allowed silence to sit between them like a blanket, comfortable.

She always liked to come out the morning of November 1st and see that plate, a melted candle blotching the whiteness...it reminded her of time.

In one of his first letters from the war he had placed a piece of melted wax in the envelope, about the size of a quarter...the black wick was still in it.  He had merely written If there was a time in my life that I could return to it would be the Halloween nights we spent in quiet.  She knew immediately what he felt.

What about these old concert tickets stuck in your mirror? Her mom yelled again from upstairs.
She stood looking out the front door, the light gray coming in through the windows...her mom tapping her hand against another box in her hand.

You can throw them away.

Monday

She awoke in the cold when the sky was the color of a nickel.

Her head squeezed, like a hammer grip, as she anticipated a day filled with bits of anxiety...colorless pleasures, a stone cold in her throat.  She sniffed, a twinge of an illness was on the verge of making an arrival and she got up out of bed.

Hurriedly putting on jeans and boots, she threw on a sweater, bra-less and took to the closet to get her jacket and gloves.  She thought about a hat, grabbed one from the top shelf and stuffed it in the jacket pocket.

The door complained when opened in the cold air and she walked onto the porch, the footsteps wooden and dull.  The air was inhaled and cool, the morning slightly foggy and absorbing the noises...she pulled on her gloves and walked to the tractor barn.

Some of the puddles were iced over in a thin sheer and easily cracked when stepped on.  The mud had frozen and was jagged and and uneven, making the walk staggering.  She pulled off the chain roped around the door handles and pulled the barn door open, a creaking yawn that opened to a darkened garage.  The tractor, her father's...and her grandfather's was parked in the middle of the room...an old John Deere with fading greens and yellows.  It still ran (nothing runs like a Deere) and she touched one of the large tires...black and flaking a little.  She couldn't afford new ones.

She climbed up into the seat, the springs giving in and reached down to turn the key.  The lights came on and the engine coughed then died.  She glanced at the gauges and saw mostly normal signs.  Gas was fine.  She tried again and the engine clanged to life, a bit of blue smoke coming from the exhaust and the engine wound up and settled in...she engaged the drive and pulled out of the barn.

The wind was starting to pick up and it lit into her ears...her head still a vise, her face cold.  She didn't put on the hat yet and quietly bit at herself for not at least fixing coffee.  But she hadn't eaten anything either and didn't want the hot caffeine on any empty stomach, burning itself while she worked.  So she pulled the jacket collar up against her and kept driving to the side of the field where the brush-cutter attachment waited.

She drove over, bouncing on the dirt and furrows and idled up next to the cutter...it had bits of frost on it from the overnight, and rust was the primary color.  But the blades were relatively new and for that she was thankful.  She backed up the tractor so it was almost touching the cutter's male portion and stopped...she got off, lifted the cutter into the tractor slot and slid home the cotter pin.  She gave it a tug to make sure it was seated...felt the secure assurance and climbed back up onto the tractor.

She made a wide turn and stood at the edge of the field...it was a glimpse into her past...she had played here for years growing up...didn't really work it as much as enjoyed it, her father coming home smelling of hay and a day in the sun.  Why she returned to make it hospitable she didn't know.  Her head hurt and she was cold...but she loved this view...loved working the rows, plowing and cutting...restoring.  Restoring the views back to the ones she remembered.  The sun was an orange spotlight through the trees, the fog lifting...her breath was exhaled in a gray plume and despite the hunger making noise in her stomach all she could hear was the idling of the tractor.  She pushed the side button triggering the turning of the cutter blades and they added more noise to the morning.

She pulled forward, destroying the blades of grass and thicket that threatened to overtake her father's farm.

She wore just the tiniest hints of a smile.

Route 29, Near New Baltimore

The ceremony for the pinning of the airborne wings took place right after the last jump in Airborne School.  It was a hot and humid southern Georgia day, and the jump master trainers were blaring Lionel Richie from there speakers in their trucks...he'd never forget "Easy like Sunday Morning" ever again.

Fort Benning's jump zones were massive flat areas of sand and grass, capable of allowing multiple flights of C-130 propellor transport jets to drop hundreds of paratroopers from the sky.  Near the gathering area where the trucks were parked a few visitors were watching their sons or uncles jump from the planes.

The last jump was a non-equipment jump...no pack, no rifle carrier, no heavy waddling out the side of the plane.  They called it a "hollywood jump"...just showing off with your primary chute and your reserve.

He remembered floating down...the last jump was from 2,000 feet so it took some time in the hot buoyant air and he could hear the jump masters on the ground using bullhorns to yell at the students one last time...."Feet and knees together morons"...helpful tips to avoid turned ankles or something worse.

He landed very casually, falling to his left and remembered staring back up at the sky, his back on the hot sand of this southern state.  The sound of the aircraft was diminishing, Lionel Ritchie's intonations were getting louder...but he was super proud that he had completed this phase and knew that he would proudly wear the silver parachute badge forever.  He rolled over and started packing up his chute.


It was too expensive to fly back from Georgia so he got a bus ticket to DC, figuring the relatively straight shot to I-95 north would give him some down time.  He had just spent the last three weeks learning how to jump from a plane...he didn't really need to go sit in one right away.

The bus was departing early in the morning to get to DC before nightfall...so one more night in barracks with no air conditioning but also no need to polish his boots again.  He was officially qualified, and he noticed the jealous looks at the students one to two weeks behind him.


He woke early, even before his alarm chirped as he had been waking up at the exact time for the last few weeks.  He was glad to be changing into jeans and a tee shirt versus the boots and fatigues of the last few weeks.  His hair was still cut short but he wouldn't need to shave it off again.  He thumbed through the paperwork on his desk, retrieved the bus ticket and walked outside to the street.  It was already warm, the streetlights yellow and the humidity already up.  He only had to wait 10 minutes before he heard the grinding gears of a slow moving Greyhound...the bright lights cutting through the morning.  It stopped with a release of the air brakes and he climbed on, his feet leaving the sand and grass of Georgia for a long time.

The freeway was relatively clear for the most part.  They passed up through Georgia into the portion of South Carolina that gives way to the On the Border venue.  He saw the giant sombrero from miles away and smiled as that place reminded him of trips to Florida.  They crossed into North Carolina and the land began to slowly give way to rolling hills.  All the trees and flowers were out...it was still a month away from Summer but it was still warm.

Outside of the Virginia snarl of traffic, the bus decided to head north on Route 29, bypassing the interstate traffic and cutting through the areas near Marshall and Warrenton, old Virginia towns with proper State houses and restaurants that served home-made pie.  Traffic was starting to build just south of where the roads would open up into multiple lanes, making it easier for people traveling to Dulles airport, his destination to fly him back to California.

He watched the cars alongside the bus, the windows were not opened due to the air conditioning and the light was darker due to the window protective panels.  The bus pulled alongside an Acura TSX, silver...there was a brunette in the car alone...she had her head back against the driver's seat, like she was resting.  She had sunglasses on so he couldn't see much of her but she had an amazing curvature of her cheek...it sculpted itself out and then down to her jaw.  She wasn't smiling but he could tell she was quite striking.

The bus pulled ahead and she retreated behind him.  He tried to turn and glance backwards but she was lost in the reflections of windshields and mirrors.

The bus stopped about a mile from there, slowly making its way north.  And here was the Acura girl again, and she had placed her sunglasses on her forehead...she was talking on the phone and talking with her hands, moving them up and down for emphasis.  She smiled once and it was a flash of white teeth and a broad grin.  She had dark eyes, they must've been brown and he saw her glance at the bus.  She couldn't see him against the blackened windows but he saw her clearly...the face framed by those cheeks and the dark hair against the lighter interior of the car.  It was like she was regarding...observing.  She brought her hand up to the phone and pushed the call dead and set the phone beside her.

She looked back up at the bus, lowered her sunglasses and laid her head back against the seat rest.

He looked up at the small city name as the bus continued pushing up north.  New Baltimore it said.

He wondered where she was going...he turned to face front again and started thinking about the flight West.

Deluge

It invades like a cat quietly entering into a morning room, the way the quiet is invaded in a funeral home when you hear the sound of the casket closing.

The soft purr of rain, the mad clap of thunder.

When the windows are humid and the Gainesville train is blurred out like white noise in the storm.

Rain is a great reminder, mostly of sadness but it can also be mundane and boring...empty of colors except some contrasts of gray and grayer.  It has a scent, particularly in summer when it has a lawn-scent, a musky full-leaf tree smell, and the puddles in potholes match the color of the sky.

Rain spoils the work of hair dryers, it clings to clothes, turns us colder.  The Susquehanna browns with it, brimming the sides of the riverwalks and spilling into the lower streets.

The Ferry near Carsley churns whitewash against the tide, the brackish waters slapping at the sides of the vessel.

Rain causes traffic, blurs red lights and cars ahead.

Songs like Patty Griffin's "You are Not Alone" are best played in the quiet of the rain...sad songs must have that sense of the window streaks that stain and remind and stream down the glass.

Rain blurs my mind, blunts the senses...blinds me to the distance.

Rain reminds me of a lot of things...and despite the saddening qualities of the storm, I remain in a deluge of memories of when were together in one.

Finer with Age

His handwriting was terrible...that was abundantly clear...and he normally never wrote her anything in pen but rather used his phone or his laptop.  But in the letter he wanted it to be authentic...to be real and clear and as close to perfect as possible.

He wanted to let her know he had found a bunch of unfinished notes and finally finished them off...snippets of stories and randomness...dating back many years...and they deserved to be finished and put out there...


He also wanted her to know that she was fine.  Not in the sense of how she felt...rather, like china...or an exceptional bourbon.

Nobody used the word fine any more except to use it as a neutral word for being okay...words like refined were an  attempt to redefine the word.

Fine...it was rare...fine art, fine wine...why not fine humans...fine women?  He tried to convey his pitiful thoughts as he scribed...not sure of the end results but at least he wanted to stop comparing her to all the others and have her realize she was uniquely herself.

She was fine.  Supremely fine.

And the only thing better than fine was finer...and that she was growing finer to him...maybe she had started in one place but as the years played out it was conspicuous that she was that rarity...of fine becoming finer.

And he hoped the note made her feel so.

The End of Some Things

He sat in the truck, engine idling enough to keep a steady steam of gray to mix in the cool air, no radio to dull the slight rumble of the Ford, the streets fairly deserted except for a lone pair of headlights now and again.  He was at the intersection of Pace Park Rd and Main Street, where the only Christmas tree lot still blinked with a scattering of lights...a few desolate trees remaining even though it was two days after the holiday. He had asked the man what would happen to them.

Those? the man had said, pointing a gloved hand to the edge where the trees lay silent...I will pack them up for recycling I guess.

He then asked if he could still buy them.  He got a weird look but he also got a fair price.  So they trundled the four trees into the back of the truck.  And he sat there in the truck, not cold because the heat was on and he now looked at the empty Christmas tree lot and felt that by being empty it was a much prettier picture.

And he remembered...from a time ago, when they had been talking about Christmas...and holidays...they were in the middle of a summer heat, with no hint of snow.  No hint of the ice that would form between them either, no distant dark stain on the horizon, portending danger.  Not even a whiff of a breeze.

What kind of tree do you usually put up? He asked casually, and though he hadn't mentioned what type of tree he knew she knew what he meant.  It had sort of matured in that way between them where context wasn't a necessity.  They could hold multiple threads of a conversation and weave in and out intermittently.  It was one of the unique things that he always imagined about them...these tiny tendrils that they could pick up and leave, left dangling they could be picked up somewhere later in time.

I never really get the one I want.  Honestly, if I could I'd do like three or four.

3 or 4 trees?  Kinda defeats the purpose.

Really?  I think it scales it even that much greater...I could have a tree with all my childhood ornaments, a retro tree.  And then I could have another with my grown up ornaments.  And a tree just with lights, because at night you don't really see the ornaments...and then another one just for presents.

3 or 4...okay.  That's a lot of needles to deal with.

I like to vacuum.

Well there you go.

And so here he was, four trees in the bed of his truck.  But no tinsel, no lights, no ornaments either from childhood or adulthood.  

He started driving, wondering if she might even still be up.

Returns

The colors of the city, particularly in the waning light, were soap gray, and the cobblestones matched these hues, darkening though in places where the doorways were set back and in shadow.

Lights were just starting to come on, yellow bulbs from restaurants, clearer white ones on streetlamps.  It was that time of the evening when it feels like surrender...the afternoon just slowly evaporates and in its ashes come the familiar darkening parts of the day.  Not yet night.  Not still day.  In between.  Each day, more or less at the same time, it returns to this familiar.  It is unstopping.  It just does.

He felt this way when she was absent...an almost undeniable shape, an almost impossible way to stop it.  His mind, so bright and shining during the day, walked through his thoughts and started turning off light bulbs by hand...feeling the heat from them as he burned himself out.

It might be summer soon, or winter...he couldn't tell...if she was near he was warm.

The streets were dark and didn't seem to have much distance to them.  He felt like he could see the end of the road.  Could almost just make it out.

A 3rd Night

Johnson played harmonica.  He was from the south, he had been in the Army a total of 53 days and he was usually very quiet.  But at dusk, as the caravan of buses headed out towards the airbase, he played low soulful riffs on a scratched up piece of metal.  I found it comforting, the heat from the North Carolina wind milling in from windows halfway down, the sun chasing and orange in the glow.  It relaxed me in ways I didn't know, mostly because I was looking for a distraction.  Anything to think about besides the jump.

I tried thinking of her, conjuring a face, a stare.  But as soon as I started thinking of the dark eyes I returned to the black door of an airplane, beckoning me forward.  Like stepping into her gaze I trudged dutifully towards it, and then hurtled myself out into the slipstream of the breeze.  At one thousand feet it was a pirouette of sky then ground then sky then parachute then ground.  Colors blended and the wind was white noise.  I was surrounded by thousands of jumpers, dark black in the air, and just as I thought about the fall I put my ankles tightly together and pounded hard down into the sand.

I never had felt so alive.  And tapping my thigh pocket I felt the hard metal cylinder of quarters.  I wanted to remember how my heart was still exploding in my chest, my hair wet with sweat and my face dripping colors from the camoflauge paint.  I packed up my chute and dropped it into my carrier bag...rolling just briefly over to watch the blinking lights of a slew of C-130s wink red lights above me, mixing with stars and a sky with scant clouds.

I hurried back with the other soldiers to the landing zone rally point.  We waited for buses to take us back to barracks, none of us talking, each remembering the thirty seconds we were in the air.

And then we stood in lines of 9 or 10, shuffling our feet and looking at watches as we waited for the phone booths to become vacant.  Husbands calling wives, boyfriends calling girlfriends, calling parents, mouthing I love you in a glass encased stall blinking with fluorescent light.  A moth coming in now and again.

Finally I had the booth, and pulled the roll of quarters out.  I dialed her number, listening to the stirring sound of circuits traveling miles towards her.  A robot voice informed me of the amount of the call and I fed four quarters in before I heard the whir of a dialed call.

Then, in those days of phone booths, it was just two people connecting.  There were no machines...no tapes of recordings.  It was luck at times...catching somebody available with the phone not being used.

I let it ring 12 times.  When I hung up the receiver the four quarters clanged loudly in the coin return.



The barracks were simple, constructed with maximizing sleeping for exceptionally tired soldiers with spare amenities.  Mostly littered with bunk beds, there was a glaring absence of privacy.  At night, men stirred with noises and sleep talking...with no air conditioning it was enough to lie in bed and listen to the sounds of trucks driving by and the occasional sound of the fire guard walking by.

I counted the holes in the ceiling, wondering where she was.  It was not a concern.

Rather it was just an erosion that started a tiny bit of worry...when your heart is beating enough to almost hear in the dark, and adrenaline is still a syrupy trail throughout your body and one is trying to relax enough and go to sleep...just calming, just quieting...if he had spoken to her he might have had that release...she was safe...he was safe...and he could fall asleep.

Instead he thought about the night jump and tried to keep her from insisting that his mind return back to worrying about her.

Satellites over Lake Anna

They were standing on the dock looking at the fading evening in the west, and you could taste the evening and the wind like a color with sugar on it.  She had heard the laughter coming from behind her, where the others were drinking and waiting...the food already cleaned up and the noise of somebody stacking the dishes after rinsing them.

She remembered when he used to talk about the nights in Arizona...doing field exercises as a young Army officer and staying out way past the lights of the small city...sometimes when it was cloudless and perfectly still you could see the satellites...tiny unblinking white specks streaming across the sky like a falling star that never quits.

She had used the word adore earlier in the day...had allowed it to emit like a secret.  It was partly due to a song, partly due to a moment...but it was out there now...it had been given and proffered.

And he had blinked at little...not that she could see him...just that he was happily surprised.

Sure, there had been words before...but in this new space, like the bright clean air above her, there were delicacies...carefulness.  But also openness...and unlike the stars above that might have a chance to fail and fall, they stayed constant...like a streaking satellite sailing high above Lake Anna.

Beds in NYC

There is a point when the brain needs to start shutting down portions...turning off the lights in unused rooms, closing drapes and locking doors that are seldom used.

The interesting thing about her was when his brain started to slowly collapse like ice cubes left in a glass it was an image of her that was revealed.  It wasn't a decline...rather it was a bit of little inspiration.

A decade before he had found himself in a tub, a phone to his ear, the water echoing with his slight movements...she had been coy, a few words revealed.  He was in a posh hotel with a ceramic tub and she was far away.

Since then he had hoped to erase the record of that conversation...to be able to speak to her unfiltered.  Unregulated.

She had unlocked herself, the skeleton key on an iron chain around her neck loosened...she had unwound the tightest ribbon from her hair, letting it fall and cascade in its glory...she had allowed him in, pushed the key into his hand and whispered something about protecting her.

He saw the windows of the room and the massive city beyond them...way south she was there.  He wished she had come with him, but he also knew why she hadn't.

But sometimes there is a big difference between absence and loneliness...tonight she was absent...but she might have just been right alongside of him.

Drive to the Atlantic

His head was against the steering wheel, his hands gripping it on either side and he listened to the radio until the song had finished.  For him it was like some signal, some reminder and he just wanted to let it play out until he pulled the lever out of Park and started the drive.

With his eyes closed he remembered how she looked when she turned from him the last time.  In between now and then they had held some conversations, snippets he would call them.  Lovely sentences and sometimes a laugh.  But then he had wanted to see her, the way you unleash a craving and when it awoke inside of him he knew that he would have to make the drive.

But that craving had come after he had stowed away a martini or two, and he knew that there was no way he was going to be able to make the drive...so he went out to the car, climbed in and tilted the seat back so he could sleep.  It was a summer night and with the windows down the breeze came in and he closed his eyes and waited.

In a dream and falling he stirred and woke up with a jolt.  Blinking he rubbed his eyes and took a few breaths...he felt okay, but wasn't sure.  He started the car and the radio came on and so did the song...and he laid his head against the steering wheel as it played.

It ended and he started the drive.

The interstate was barren, devoid of all cars and mostly just long-haul truckers high on speed and Red-Bulls so he made amazing time.  He wasn't sure what her reaction would be...an illicit invasion and he wasn't even sure how to find her...maybe a text...maybe an email.  No call.

He just knew she was at the ocean.

He hit the Bay Bridge at dawn, when the east was melting away the prior night's blues...he crossed with the full orange and yellows in front of him and pitch black behind him.  A seagull hung beside him, high in the air until it spiraled off.  The windows were still down and the scent of the sea came roiling through...salty, humid...fresh in the morning.

Another reminder song came on, and he turned up the volume, slightly singing along as the day started climbing higher in the sky.  He wondered if she was still sleeping, sprawled out across the bed, her hair slightly covering her face.  He wondered if she might be awake, padding across the floor in her sleepwear, tussled and yawning and listening for the first drips of coffee.  Maybe she was awake and drinking a cup on the porch, looking at the same exact colors as he saw.  He decided he preferred that last image and pretended they were staring exactly at the same sun at the same time.

The song ended and commercials played...he sped up as he descended down the slope of the bridge, angling faster and moving straight east to a place where he knew she would be and he couldn't get there fast enough.

Night

He let the door swing gently open in front of him, the screen slightly protesting on its old hinges as he stepped out onto the porch.  The frogs were in full throat, the fireflies alighting across the deep dark lawn and a few moths stirred and danced against the porch light.

He held a cigar in his right hand to stave off the mosquitos and in his left hand was a double pour of bourbon with no ice to dampen the taste.

Right now she was in a perfectly pressurized airplane hurtling across the Atlantic, much closer to the stars then he was, her arc away from him, just a red-blinking streamlined piece of metal flying at 38,000 feet above a coal black ocean.  He imagined she was sleeping.

He hoped she was, pulling a sip from his drink and then inhaling a bit of the cigar to keep the bugs away.

Somewhere Pandora was playing...a Chris Botti radio station that he had hoped she would like...she had enjoyed one song but he wasn't ready to declare victory yet.

Instead he just watched the high contrails of blinking lights above him, wondering where the people were flying.  Heading away.

He enjoyed this time of the evening, when it was relatively still...his mind a calm room...a thought of her could walk in like somebody exiting a shower in a towel...a pleasant disruption.  A surprise.  Strolling languidly around, he narrowed his thoughts to just such an image...just murmuring of conversations...nothing heavy.  All light.

He tried to think about how far away she was from him, the speed of the airplane and the curvature of the earth and realized the math was too hard.  Super far was where he landed on an answer.  He wondered if she could see outside or if it was jet black.  

Probably sleeping he hoped again.

He returned to the thought of her walking around in his mind again and closed his eyes, the frogs and the crickets and the trumpet music soothing him as his cigar gently glared orange and his bourbon swirled brown in his glass, a color of her eyes and yet another reminder of her on this perfect summer night.

Passeggiata...a little walk

He didn't know how to speak Italian, but it was on his list of amazing things still left to do.  He had been there before, and was familiar with the concept of around sunset when young lovers would walk and converse...early stage romance when the jousting was designed to get to know one another, a laugh, a slight glance of a hand against a hand, the close-in streets purposefully pushing them together.

He remembered the scent of an Italian evening, the light humidity and the slight air of garlic and tomatoes and the lingering glaze of forever...the streets and the buildings seemed to have been there forever, so long ago that it was mind-numbing to consider.  It wasn't an old smell...rather, it was like the scent of a bookstore attic, where time passed so very slowly and we were just passers-by.

He remembered the noise from an Italian evening, the din of silverware against plates, the clank of glasses raised in toasts, the murmuring...the dialogue and the debate.  Italians gesticulated with their hands as they punctuated the evening air with emphasis...there was passion in the discussion, both sides weighing in...sometimes quietly, sometimes and more often than not loudly.  But mostly the echo of supper and food being shared, and conversation flowing as non-stop as the liquor in the glasses.

He remembered seeing the lovers, the ones slow walking, pausing often...mostly to turn and full-face each other.  The older couples walked beside each other, talking and barely turning...but the new loves were unable to glance at each other sideways...they had to turn and see the fullness of the other, the full-throated glimpse of somebody in front of them in an evening...blessed to be in this street, at this time, beneath a sky mottling in an evening.

The world was speeding by them, on Vespas and bicycles and activities and colors...the internet was pulsating in their pockets and reminding them of tomorrow's efforts and the weather and the scores in sports.  But in this street, this square thousands of years old they held a brief stare that felt like only a moment but mirrored a billion emotions bottled up from many years ago.

The ice in his glass was melting, the condensation wet and seeping off his drink and onto the table.  He wasn't in Italy.

But he thought about the full-face turn and the view of her and he was reminded of all those things that had been bottled up inside of him...not for one thousand years, but definitely feeling like something quite close to that.

Piers and Lighthouses

There are times that I am unmoored, adrift and stolen by some tides, lunar or otherwise that nudge around the days...around the nights in a blackened evening with very little shapes to guide me towards a horizon.

You blink at me like some far off lighthouse...the quick flash in an evening that I may miss if not looking carefully.

I have been in the rain at sea, when the water matches the color of the sky and the drops and it blends and obscures.  It hides and there is no land and it is hard to see a horizon at all.

I have been in the rain on a street, a sudden gust that has captured us unaware, and your hair slick wet and darkening and your eyes guiding me across to safety, a place to find cover.

I find that if I can be tied against you with some salt-laden ropes and some fine sailor's knot that I can survive any storm, be buffeted against by the most tropical depressions...that you still me with your hand and you ground me in a smile.

Lighthouses were built to warn, to stave off the approach and prevent being grounded up the rocks.  Your lighthouse eyes are beacons however, inviting and asking to come closer.

I pull in the water to drift your way, to glide or sail or paddle...to have you bring me in and let me sidle up and find my haven.

Slivers

A cut in the sky, low to the horizon and rising slowly in a Springtime dusk...the fingernail moon slides upward and posts its wry smile in a evening that is ending.

A slight reveal against the black plane of space and night sky.  It is so different than the full moon, completely unrelated...a different emotional planet.

A sliver.  A hint of things to come, lightness to reveal.  Almost like a wink.  It rises over the shadow black limbs of trees, it is a gray glimpse.

In the morning it washes out completely, the dawn erasing it like a smudge leftover from the night before.

Slivers...like tiny shapes that get under your skin, bits of wood, the fingernail moon is piercing a slight etching in the sky.

In the waning of a light it is the only color I can see.  The only contrast that I can detect.

But it is so far away, it is barely there.  It is almost like a reminder.  A memory.

It is like a bit of wood, piercing me, reminding me.

A memory.

Stay

The sound stayed hypnotic...the rhythm of beach waves, the spray of surf...in the evening ending in a nautical twilight the ocean became her heartbeat...it was a roar inside of her, a sensation she felt as the afternoon ended and the people plucked up their blankets and headed back into homes and hotels, routines and norms.

She stayed.

She loved the water...loved the wind and its scented breath.  She measured in moments, tiny spoon-filled portions that were different.  She stopped thinking for a bit...let the earth consume her. She found a peace that she rarely ever felt...her mind clogged with the grind of work, sand in gears of stress and deadlines.

In the moments by the water she felt a rupture, an unleashing...letting go.  So she stayed.

She took a short tip up the shoreline, letting the waves collect at her feet and draw her in.  She felt the sand, the coarseness, the slight sting if a shell glanced against her toe...her hair was in a breeze, cascading around her, her top pulled by the wind and warm...her feet cooler in the water.

She felt the tug of the ocean, the tug of the gulf.  She felt what sometimes her heart felt when it was pulled and plucked...she felt the draw, the curve and the slight movement towards the tide.  She balanced all that she could on that slight slope of the shoreline.  She was between the earth and the sea.  Between one world and another.

She came upon a group of pilings, driven deep into the sand, the pier they had supported long gone.  A walkway disappeared.  A feature altered.  Changed.

These pathways that took people to places they had never seen. Adventure, or at least something different.

Those had washed away, empty attempts.  Anyone could venture down the pier.

But the pilings stayed.  Driven deep.  She remarked upon them, noticing their perfect balance, against the earth and the sea.  Reminders.

Reminders of things that stayed stuck.  Things that held on.  Driven deep into the sand against storms and tides.

Accepted them.  Withstood them.

She walked amongst the pilings, feeling quite familiar with them.

Hey Pool Boy

There seemed to be, on the breeze, the scent of lavender, like the Pacific was exhaling a breath of warm wind that cascaded past the flowering cactus and past the blooming vines...it was what you might call Summer if it could be described.  It was clean.  Pristine.

He extended the full length of the pool net, a full 12-feet and calmly swept the pool to collect the leaves.  There were few.  He withdrew the net and let it drip as he flipped it over the fence to the steep drop-off next to the pool.  His back was turned when she emerged.

She stole in like a cat.

Legged, brunette and casual.  She didn't glance his way, rather focusing on the lounge chair of choice.  A quick glance at the sun to draw an angle that was best for sunning.  She had a broad hat on and a robe that was as white as the cement of the pool.

He turned and regarded her with a bit of a nod.  She didn't return it.

She peeled off the robe and flung it upon the chair next to hers.  She placed the hat there as well.

She sat on the lounge and pulled something from the robe.  A bottle of sunscreen.  She shook it slightly and then turned towards him.  He pretended to be skimming the clear blue water of the pool despite nothing was floating on it.  He went back and forth like a metronome.

She squeezed out some of the white liquid as it pooled in her hand, a small glob in her perfect grip.

She briskly rubbed her hands together, and starting at her perfectly painted coral toes she smeared the liquid upon her.

He pulled the net up and placed the long aluminum pole in its place on the fence.  He was controlling his breathing like somebody caught in a fire.

He walked over to the towel barn and found two heavy-cotton towels.  Her initials were upon them in a slight blue against the white.  They looked like a tattoo that he might get.  He wasn't sure.

They were already upon him though.  Those initials.  Perfectly etched.  Well maybe not perfect but definitely hers.

He slowly walked towards her, she was placing more lotion on her shoulders.

Could you please put some of this on my back?  It really wasn't a question but rather permission.

He took the bottle from her hand, a faint glance against her and spilled some into his hands.  He rubbed it til it was warm and then started on the high of her back.  Her skin was just coming from a winter and he made sure he covered her smoothly.  He made sure no residue or lines existed.

He moved lower, towards the small of her back...the slight blondish hairs just above her bathing suit bottoms.  He stayed well above that.

Please make sure you get the lower back.  

Again the bottle, again warming it with his hands.  He nestled just above the hem of her suit, feeling her skin give way beneath his touch.  He used his hands versus his fingers, wanting to just form her like a clay.  He stood up when he was done.

You have very good hands.  

He regarded her, reached down and tilted her chin in his hands, upturning her face to his.  Behind him the Pacific burned in a effigy of dimes, sparkles that lit up the sea and reflected into the blue sky, a lighter color than the ocean but almost the color of the pool.  Her eyes were brown, the color of the earth and the color of rivers that ran in sweet streams in his mind.  She was the land, behind him was the sea.  He connected the both of them.

He kissed her.  In a way that revealed.  The way you knew it wasn't the first and not the last, and that there had been some before...in quiet dark rooms and places far from outside by the pool.

He tasted her and it reminded him of the jasmine and the breeze coming off the Pacific. It was hers and hers alone.

He parted from her, and went back to pick up the brush to begin scrubbing the tile of the pool.  She settled onto a towel behind him, burning into his back with a stare that felt like wildfires.

Casualness

Maybe because it is a Monday, or rather the Sunday before the start of the work week that makes us a tad exhausted already.

We glance upon each other like a skipped stone thrown across a pond...a few hits here and there ultimately to sink to the bottom and join the others.

There is a bit of casualness in our interactions...a bit of subtlety and brush-bys.  It is not necessarily forged in the daily dose, the repetitiveness of seeing each other all the time.

Is that what makes it special?  The casualness?

I don't know.  It feels like there should be more...more connection.  More attention.  But in the lack of it there is a comfort. A casual sense of being.  Like when you're beside the ocean.  It is familiar.  It is something you've seen.  But it delivers the expected.  It isn't a surprise.

You are the tides of my day.  Highs and lows.

You remain constant...despite inconsistencies.

A north star, I'd guess.

But distant.

I think you give me what you can.  In your casual nature.

And I scurry to pick it up and collect it and build out a structure that I can call familiar.

I collect those brush-bys.  They are the orbit of the planets to the sun to me.

Vegas Echoes

He had a roll of quarters.

Before the days of mobile phones and cellular towers there were phone booths and kiosks...places where you would dial a rotary phone and talk to an operator and determine a distance...and coins would be added one by one and they would tinkle in the system and then you would hear a ringing and then you'd be connected...if somebody picked up.

No caller ID.  No preview.

Somebody was calling.  Perhaps it's important.

He only knew that if he were to try to call her he needed to ensure he had enough coin.  Enough time to tell her.  He didn't want to run out of quarters to convey.

He had no other money, he had made some mistakes and he was running out of lines.  He had a few items and some prayers.

She was one of the latter.

He knew she might not pick up...knew that she might not acknowledge.

But simply he wanted her to know that in his mind he was already connected to her and that the call was simply perfunctory... mechanical.

He looked in his hand and the stack of quarters was a neat roll.  Each represented close to five minutes apiece...he figured this was worth an hour of discussion.

She would never talk that long.

Almost a Spring

There is the moment when a match is struck against the side of a matchbox, the slight click and the sudden hiss of a flame...it is usually quiet but then it is applied against the awaiting cylinder of tobacco and then it flares as she inhales...

She inhaled...a deep inhalation that revealed it had been a long week.  Exceptionally long.  She wore her frustration like a color...a gray that wore on her.

But to him it was an orange.  It was the color of the match, the end of the cigarette.  She blew the smoke plume at him, an indication that he was around.  She brushed some hair from her eyes...she had recently had a haircut and a color, and her fingers were still trying to figure out the best look.  Regardless  the hair mirrored her eyes and it was warming.  Chocolate.

She looked tired.  Mostly in her eyes,  a sense of things.  Not in her skin or her face.  Rather she wore thin in her stare.

She half smiled at him, apologizing for her quietness.

He got up, leaned over and kissed her.  She tasted of her day...her smoke, her hours.  She tasted of the lack of sleep and she tasted like her usual candy.

Against her, behind her a sky exploded and turned colors against hours...there was a rumor of a Nor'easter and it was getting old...this cold.

But the mash up of his lips and hers, the burn of her flaring cigarette and the smoothness he was trying to bring to her were a warmth.

She was trying not to slowly melt.

He was trying to heat her from the inside.

She inhaled and blew purple smoke towards him...he accepted anything that had once been inside of her.

Mona Lisa Smile

It was an afternoon.

God.

It was a sun filled spring.  A day where you could drink in the daylight, let the sun spill its juices into an afternoon.  Car windows reflecting diatribes of light, blinks...flashes.

The phone call had been somewhat suggestive. He had painted a picture that had crossed a line.  A suggestion.  A coercion.

At this point words between them were mere precursors.  Rather, when their bodies met the words just melted.  The bodies took over and replaced syncopation.  Rhythm.  Don't talk, just let my tongue tell you what is next.

It was rapture.  It was sublime.  It is interesting the angles a body takes when a body takes over.  When a resistance gives in to a pull...or a tug.  A push.

It is really in the breathing if you think about it...the simple exhilaration of parted lips against some other's.  When enveloping creates tension, and there becomes few parts that are not touching.

She had mentioned a Gap skirt, it had uneven cuts on its end, the color of khaki.  It was a summer skirt, meant to be worn in a day much warmer.  It was casual, maybe provocative.

But in remembering he remembered that the greeting was intimately familiar.  You know when you know.  The body remembers.  The heart, the pulse...most importantly the brain flips a toggle switch that simply says "i remember this and I enjoy it".

Man, was it enjoyable. Incredible.  Like two pieces that fit.  The last piece of a lifelong puzzle. Solving.

That is what she did.  She solved.  She completed sentences.  She completed mysteries.

She solved a sweet ton of his issues...she spread solvent and bandaged wounds.  She poured herself in tiny, barely perceptible pieces into him.  She rarely exposed but when she did it was redemptive.

So when she climbed into the back of his car that day, the Gap skirt high on her thighs and the tiny triangle revealing she wore nothing underneath was an eclipse of the sun on his day.  She knew she was on the edge of the normal and she was balancing just a bit off of it.

The day was bright blue and with few clouds.  It was warmish, the type of day when you could go outside without a coat, without a sweater.  It was a day to drink in the colors, the sweet air.  It was a spring, a new beginning.

But his mind was summer.  Heat and humidity.  Fulsome.  Sweating. Reminders.

He glanced at her eyes, dark and dancing.  Her smile was fixed, tight lipped and daring.  She was daring him.

She had such confidence.

He was a bit more than smitten, and tried to drive safely to a place where he could avoid colliding...only to ultimately collide with something he was ready to meet head-on.

Where the Sea Meets the Sky

She had a  penchant for water...oceans, rivers, she photographed them in droves, usually at sunset or sunrise, the day starting or concluding.   She felt very carefully that she captured them in the moment, that one exact second when the shutter clicked and the picture emerged...she didn't try to really capture a scene, she was trying to capture and carefully preserve a feeling.

She had shared with him a picture of the water when the sky, the land and the ocean were almost a single color, an unedited view of landscape beneath her feet to far above her head.  She was incredibly delighted that it was captured as she had seen it...was mesmerized by the singleness of the colors, the way it felt like a single brush-stroke.

Driving away from her later that night, he imagined her as the landscape, the ocean, her dark eyes the suns that lured his gaze upwards and blurred her into a brush-stroke.  As familiar as he was with her singleness of colors he still could remember each moment, as if the cadence of the heart or the exhilaration in his mind was frozen in an image.  In his throat he could still remember the tension as he lingered upon her, his mind unfreezing the image and allowing the quickening of a pulse and the restoration of heat and warmth throughout him.  She was by no means any simple picture, but he had stored her visage into his mind so many times that he could easily conjure it up and she would be a resplendent image that never changed.  She was preserved, beautifully...carefully.  But mostly as a feeling...and he loved that the most.

2 lovers on a street

Coming home I saw two lovers on the street.

You could tell...you could trust.  There was no gap between them, they fit, they melded.  They molded into each other like a billion puzzle pieces finding a home.

They were not caring about my stare as I walked by...rather their eyes were full of each other, drinking in each other like an addiction that was being unleashed.

They may have been recent lovers...they may have been lovers of old.  But the aura and the tension of them was palpable.  Like a third rail electricity.  Like that copper smell when a transformer is over-heating.

I was in a wind, a cold draft that swept along the street that was filled with strangers...the homeless, the late workers, the dreary and the pale.  People were just blobs moving around me, colors muted and eyes averted.

But they were on a corner, like a bloom.  Like fresh pastels added to a black and white photograph.  They were honey to bees.

I remembered a line from a song that I had sent her..."and I ached for my heart like some tin man".  It was an emptiness, a wringing out of something wrought...a reveal.  Like she had plucked and removed a piece of me that only she could possess.  And when together she would politely place it in its proper place and make me whole...but she had to be there to do it...without her I was incomplete.

I watched these two lovers on the street and knew that they were whole.  I could see it in their bodies as they formed the shape of a question mark against each other.  They wrapped.  Immersed.  Their legs intertwined, in the cool of an evening.  They were probably warm.

They were police-siren reminders and tornado warning sounds to your absence.  The empty fuckingly empty space.

I walked past them, pretended to ignore them, hating them for the very image that I craved and could still faintly remember and could still conjure up but it still felt half-assed.

Simple fact was I needed you beside to restore.  But that wasn't happening for now.

I zipped up my coat and collected it around my throat as the evening had suddenly grown colder.

spray cans

I see the overpass, the white brick buildings...unremarkable, undistinguished.  I see blank spaces and I see voids.

I see a blank dawn, a vanilla sky.  I see a cloud with imperfections...I see a road with blemishes and potholes.  The backs of cars with taillights.

I see front doors, garage doors that I enter time and time again...I recognize the room view, recognize the shapes.  I see the melting of all things that are familiar into a recognizable lump.  I see them colorless, gray and ordinary.

I see the pale people, the strangers and the familiar.  I sense their sameness.  They are all the same.

It's like in my pocket of my coat is a can of spray paint...an iridescent color...provocative.  Evoking.  Something that stands out, catches the eye.

I would love to just press down on the button and release the colors.  What would I write?  Your name?  A script that maybe people could read?

I'd write it wherever I could...the sides of cars, on the sidewalk in front of work.  I might add a decorative heart, or an arrow...hell a smiley face.

I'd think about you coloring my world, my sameness...with your provocative name and your presence.  You provide the graffiti to my day, you write on my white overpasses, you write on my boring garage door.

You don't try to...you just do.

In my mind I would try to share with just a few people your name, and write it in big large letters.
So that I could see it for just awhile.

And have people linger and stare and wonder who that person was...this small bit of art.  This small bit of you.