New

It wasn't a real color, this outside air, this fog that fell and laid upon the earth...snuggled up to the window and peered in with colorless eyes, shapelessness.

It looked neither cool nor warm, just a neutral.  A neither here nor there.  It was like nothing existed, nothing mattered, nothing was just that...an empty space, devoid. 

Inside the room, she lay on the bed, outstretched...her flesh a contrast to the whites of the sheets...immersed in the linens...conjoined with him, their heads on pillows just inches from each other.

Despite the rather neutral colors inside, there was a kaleidoscope in their brains, quick fast twirling views of flames, sugars melting in a black iron pan, the arc of solar flares against the blackness of space, the small tiny smoke when a candle is blown out...there was music somewhere too, just a hint of noise to occupy the space. 

In their stares interrupted occasionally by slow blinks they conversed...

Admittance...conclusions.

Mirth.

Wry wit.

Mostly it was comfort...the collapse of worries and outside influence...here in the fog-encased world it was a haven.  A place for two.

It felt familiar...known...trusted. 

But also, it felt like something that continued to be the most unique portion...the most appropriate sensation regardless of how many encounters, how many minutes or hours....shared and spent.

It felt new.

Snow Globe Season

He struggled with the wrapping paper.

Not as much as he struggled with the gift though...knowing full well the particular size of the box would fully raise already-raised eyebrows in her family. 

But once purchased it was no longer a weight in his mind...he had transacted and now he need only to give it away.

But the wrapping paper wasn't cooperative; it tore twice...the scissors left sloppy edges...the corners were tucked around the box unevenly...he literally almost went through a whole roll to cover a box the size of a hockey puck.

In the end he stuck a big ribbon on it to mask any imperfections.  It was on the seat beside him now as he drove south.

The treelines were devoid of any leaves, they were stark burnt matchsticks stuck in the dark earth...the road was a black smear across the world and nobody was on it...it was darkening quickly, one day after the solstice it still got dark early. 

In this part of the world.

This was her part of the world...but he didn't feel invasive.  Just outside of it.  It has formed a protective cocoon around her...it might as well have been a bit of sanctuary...it was quieter and more reminiscent for her...she never complained about it.  She returned to it.

And it was beyond the bounds of logic that he would ever enter into it...this place...foreign but familial.  Her roots were as deep here as they had long been in her family...anointing earth and property with the blood and sweat of generations...there were many of her family buried down there...it was true north...her capital H Home...she felt its pull like a tide...and returned to it with a humble pride.

As she should.

He could feel the south enveloping him as he drove, the flattening of the lands and the tributaries of water as he drove across bridges...he had one scary moment when a deer poked its head out of the forest, black eyes glinting off of his headlights in the near-dusk sky...but it stayed still and he didn't have to slam on his brakes.

He knew she was already there, having gone down a few days earlier.  In fact his arrival had been debated passionately...whether to come, whether to stay away.  In the end she confided that the visit was perhaps long overdue...she could reveal what she had been keeping inside and now let it outside...unwrapping him so to speak for the rest to see.

He checked Waze and found himself suddenly near...and a bit unsettled.  He imagined they'd be assembled like an audience when he strode in, a lone entertainer...a soloist.  Very little room for second impressions...his unfamiliarity a knife through the comfort and accordance...he just hoped that moment would just be a second long and then he could find a drink.

He pulled up to the place that Waze indicated was his destination...the cars and trucks parked outside seeming to indicate some sort of party.  He had passed a red barn and he knew that was a marker.

Turning off the ignition, he let the car tick for a few minutes...no doubt they had seen the headlights so he didn't have a lot of time.  He texted her to state his arrival but she didn't respond.

He reached over the seat and grabbed both his gift for her and the housewarming gift box.  There was also a sprig of winter colored flowers...this wasn't his first rodeo.

He strode towards the front door, pausing to look up briefly...here, uncluttered by nearby cities the sky was ablaze...and the scents were of nearby brackish rivers and estuaries...he imagined there was a certain point in her drive, with the windows open, that she knew she was close...she could smell home before she got there.

He walked up and saw lights on everywhere, and laughter from the inside.  He saw movement and stirring.  He knocked and waited...there wasn't a porch light on so he wasn't visible except as a shadow.

The noise from inside was loud...he looked for a doorbell...wondered if ringing it would be a good idea...maybe infants were asleep, dogs were lounging...he didn't want to announce himself in chaos.

He set the gifts down to fetch his phone...still no response to his text.  He mouthed an obscene word and put the phone back into his pocket and picked up the gifts.

And stared at the door.

Inside was a world that was about to be slightly altered...not necessarily in a bad way but there would definitely be a shift in gravity....and he was that force.  And again, it wasn't a planetary explosion or a black hole appearing in their universe...but rather maybe a new moon.  Or a new star. 

But not a new sun...no, that role was reserved for her.  She was his.

He thought he'd knock a little louder this time and the door was opened...by somebody he didn't recognize...so he said his name...followed by her name so there was some context.  It was a male who opened and in typical male fashion he just nodded and gestured for him to come in.

It was warm, the warmth of people in the house and winter clothes combining...the noise level was tolerant but staccato bursts of laughter came from the kitchen.  He thought he heard the sound of her.  It was distinguishable against the din.  He could recognize it anywhere.  Anytime.

A few turned to regard him and he smiled and nodded and he remembered later that the silence in the living room caused a few to come out of the kitchen.  She was one of them...and at that moment, he was introduced in her world...they were all watching...waiting.  He was as well.  Would she cross over and shake his hand?  Would she run and jump into his arms into a hug?

She looked amazing...cheeks red from laughing, eyes a bit of shine with bourbon and she looked like you would hope she would look at Christmas...wearing red.

She walked past cousins and sisters, brothers and infants, navigating a maze of legs and chairs and then she was in front of him...she was still smiling.  And she leaned in, slightly smashing the presents, slightly crushing the flower arrangements and she kissed him on the mouth.

and stepped back and laughed...a delightful disruption in the room, and taking their cue from her they all stood and smiled and came up to him and took his gifts and soon he was standing there shaking hands and being introduced to names and faces...and they were friendly and accommodating...the southern hospitality spilled out like honey and pooled around them. 

He made small talk and pointed out at some of the decorations on the tree...he held one of the toddlers and took one of the drinks offered to him...it was vodka and cranberry and it was a perfect shade of pink. He looked around, found her, arms folded and regarding him...and he raised his glass to her.  She blew him a kiss.



It was much later that he was finally able to catch it...apply it...and return it.  They were in an old room, probably hers but either way they were finally alone...they spoke in muted tones...intermittent kisses and the clutch of two people who now could revert to a much smaller world.  A world where the wallpaper was from her youth...the bed a familiar one where she had laid her head many many times before...but alone.

In the light from outside the window there were some first tiny flurries...unexpected...just drifting along with the wind.  Bouncing lightly against the glass...she mentioned seeing them first and for a few minutes they enjoyed the sight of tiny scurrying flakes against the world, that snow-globe effect where they were inside it and it was being shaken up outside with the lights revealing the whirlwind effect. Somewhere outside the room an old clock in the hall ticked away...

The noise from below was lowering as doors were closed and car lights lit up...their beams adding to the whirlwind as they cut across the lawn and illuminated the scenery. 

Soon it was quiet...and they were laying on the small bed, their bodies aligned along each other as her upper torso was against him and their legs paralleled...they were still dressed, almost like a gesture of formality to his presence in her old house. 

They stayed like that for a very long time, listening to the clock in the hall periodically chime, watching the snow grow larger outside, whirling bits as random as dreams, the two of them keeping each other warm, the unopened box still in its wrapping paper near her bedside to be opened soon...

They whispered into the night...sometimes lips touching, forming words against a kiss...mostly he just breathed her in...this sun, providing new oxygen in a life found in a whole new world.

Definitions

Beauty was in the coffee by the bedside....carefully brewed in a morning in Wakefield when the sleet from the night before had stopped its persistent clatter...he had stolen away from the warmth to face the cold floor, pad away in boxers and a tee shirt and slowly open the door so the hinges wouldn't squeak and wake her.

Beauty was in the cold of the kitchen, across the view of the expanse of the farm that she grew up on...as he found measured spoons of the coffee and found the way to brew it, hearing the gurgling of the heated water express itself into the grounds and spill liquid warmth.  There was a beauty in the alchemy of turning beans into liquid...water into coffee...her with him, her into him, them into us.

Beauty was in the bath he drew for her...warm but not hot...an older bathroom that felt larger when she was younger but now felt immensely small...beauty was in his care of candles, the scent of summer linens despite summer being so far away...so that the room felt warm and clean...and the tub waters were thick with a bathbomb that left it opaque.

Beauty was in that right temperature, prepared for her well shaven legs to enter slowly...immersing.

Beauty was in her dipping her toe into his thoughts and stirring his mind...the waters congealing...mixtures of her and him and blurring the world that he knew.

Beauty was in her removal of clothes, shedding like an autumn tree, revealing her limbs and her core, her essence, baring it to him in the comfort of his regard...so that she knew the trust, and the accommodation he would provide....he would comfort her like a blanket in her state...he would embrace like snow on the branches...he would cover her and in those moments together it made it all very beautiful.

Beauty was in her voice, a sound from another room...beckoning... a beautiful word as it announces a request...a call.  A request.  Come here...and the desire to respond, to turn and face...her voice was like a sun to flowers, turning petals to open and expose.

Beauty was in hearing her footsteps outside...a presence...gravity.   A real person, beside. 

Beauty was in the empty bourbon glass by the bedside...a witness to a wanton night...fuel for the fire.  As she emptied it she warmed and as she warmed she aligned alongside to him...they clinked glasses in toasts to each other, kissed above the drinks...beauty was in the taste of a bourbon kiss...the setting aside of crystal next to them and the move onto serious business.

Serious bedroom business that redefined beauty once again...and again.

Beauty is what she exuded in her sleep, her comfort...his slight rise in the bed to see the outline of her, that familiar shape and profile.

Beauty is what he awoke to...her sweet eyes and sleep tussled hair. 

Beauty is what he dreamed about occasionally, so hard to predict.  Couldn't force.

But as he climbed the stairs back to their room, two cups of coffee in his hands, he knew that opening the door would be a restoration of his world, a refinement of his day, an exposure to beauty that he had hoped to ever find...and would once again find.

Bones & Air

I walk alone in the bones of the city...the high structures...the millions of strangers.  A rain that only dampens and corrupts but at the same time cleanses...it washes our sins and lets the drain into overflooded gutters.

I stride the streets.

A bit of music in my ears, an anthem, a love song.  It is a bit of you in my music, a bit of you in my mind...amidst these strangers I seek a pair of eyes that may look like yours, a bit of hair as it falls that reminds me of you...so many passers-by...there should at least be one. 

Be one that may briefly resemble you.

But goddamn that is impossible...isn't it?  In this city of a million plus how could I ever find another you when even on this entire planet that isn't possible?

I feel the wind whip up amongst the streets...the long stretches...it effects my breathing...my normal rhythmic breathing...

Not the breathing that occurs at certain moments with you.

The streets reflect colors and shapes...but mostly it is noise...sirens, horns...talking in a myriad of languages...some happy, some sad....cannot tell for sure.

I glance at the sky and it is low and bland...stars are hidden tonight...but I know they exist.  They are a million miles away...and you are not quite that far.

I find the city cold...quite the opposite of how you are to me.

This bevy of corners and streetlights...this street of signs and lights...you were way more mysterious...you had no indicators...it was all based on feel...making my way down your avenues.

I heard murmurs...the sounds of buses and taxis...the slight pull of traffic and the spill of pedestrians between stoplights.  It is stop and go.

Rather with you it was languid...it was pulling taffy...stretching and stringing...not breaking but clinging.  Sugary...the very essence of you is a sugar that I crave, a candy-tooth desire.  I find it stark against the rest of the blaring colors and noise.

In this city of millions I find you...I seek you...I exude you.  I want to find you at that corner, bundled in clothes and hats and mittens...

Maybe you hold a cigarette ripe for lighting.

Maybe you hold a kiss ripe for commencing.

No bother...the journey was worth it.  Navigating these pressing crowds of passers-by...I seek you out to find one who fits.

In so many ways.

Hand in glove.

Rose to vase.

I want to breathe in your fresh air...beyond the bones of this city...outside the carnage and chaos.  I want to go past infrastructure and soaring bricks...I want the human...the blood...the real.

I want you to want the real as you cross a street across a sea of people and feel like I could pluck you out and make you feel special, make you feel wanted...make you feel comforted.  At home.

But a home you do not know yet...but a hope you speculate.  A home that you know might exist.

In this city of millions I want you to feel alone....but I want you feel so amazingly special to one.

That is the paradox.

Air

Invisibleness...

Yet brush against me, inhale and breathe.

A nonchalant glance upwards, hoping...wishing the frame would fill with the shape of you.

This void, this void that is filled with this invisibleness...

Like a light finger gently brushing a cheek, gently pushing fallen hair to tuck behind your ear.

The color of a whisper

The taste of love

The scent of you across the miles.

You light up the room like a candle in a blackout; you light up the day like the first sun after a storm.

I am awash in you, the barest of emotions that can be detected from afar...but felt so intimately from inside...

The shape of a kiss

The dart of a memory stuck in my mind

It is lesser than need but greater than want...what is that gray area between...that undefinable word?

It is rhythmic

Like a heartbeat, a pulse...bloodstream.

It is alive and living.

Maybe it is a need.

Maybe it is required.

The you.

You rush by me, you come inside, you brush against me in your invisibleness.

You are air...

I need you to breathe.

Believe

He felt her when she was away, a depression, an absence...the wake of air when somebody walks by you with a familiar perfume...

The first flush in your face when you exit into the cold...maybe somebody opens the door up and you feel the freezing breeze first...you anticipate and you expect...you tighten the upper coat.

Distance is a hard, long and rusty razor...it doesn't leave polite cuts...nothing straight and even.  Rather it cleaves...it corrupts...

But you still rise in the morning and see if you can still find the moon rise.  You scrub soap over skin and let the steam of the shower heat start your day.

The sun hints just over the blackened trees of the shadowy parts and you know she is out there...somewhere.  You believe it.  You can almost remember exactly what she felt like.

And in the slowness of the holidays it becomes more crushing, more compounded...the miss of her clutch becomes an ache. 

And it feels like you are barefoot in the snow...maybe just in socks...shivering and you can see maybe a house with a chimney breathing white smoke into the cold air...and it is a reminder that somewhere else somebody is warm...

You know she is warm somewhere. 

You believe she is.  You hope she is.

Her eyes the dark dirt colors of freshly furrowed fields....that seem cool in the distance until you are up close and they lighten into almost caramels that remind you of toffee...a candy mouth and what did John Mayer call it, a bubble-gum tongue?

Evidence, visual...the slight weight of her when aligned...the pull of her. 

Like Jupiter's moons...every night they orbit, caught in gravity...they are visible...present.

She is like the bright undiscovered moon to his planet...rotating...sometimes it is the dark side...other times she is reflected in the light.

She is a gift-wrapped mystery, a favorite color, undressing her was the wildest of presents being slowly disassembled, and the great reveal beyond the ability to describe. 

Like walking into a fireplace warmed room from the cold.

She was warmth, whether near or far.  But still...at times...he felt a bit of the frost forming, just a little, mostly at night when there was no moon...until she opened some door in his mind and briefly sidled out and it warmed him from within.

She burnt like a pilot light in him mind...that low blue color of flame always on...until they met again briefly and she turned it up and it lit fires and flames inside.  Burning through forests of trees in his memory, darkened forests the colors of winter night, and her perfect landscape the color of snow under the moon. 

He didn't always get to see her...but he always believed he would again. 

He loved to believe that.

And hoped she shared in that belief as well.

Sound

"About 250 million light years away, at the center of a cluster of thousands of galaxies, a supermassive black hole is humming to itself in the deepest note the universe has ever heard (as far as we know). The note is a B-flat, about 57 octaves below middle C, which is about a million billion times deeper than the lowest frequency sound we can hear (yes, that’s an actual number from actual scientists).

The deepest sound you’ve ever heard has a cycle of about one oscillation every twentieth of a second. The drone of Perseus’ black hole has a cycle of about one oscillation every 10 million years. That’s sound on a massive scale, played across deep time."

He blinked himself awake, the house foreign, the room unfamiliar, even the cascade of light through the window was strange...but the bed was warm and as he turned he saw her next to him, her face looking away so all he saw was the shape of her below the covers and her hair strewn about the pillow.

They had last made love around 4am, when she had reached over to drink some water and ended up staying.  A quick delicate gesture and she had whispered in his ear...and in the darkness they met in the middle of the bed.

But now he was awakening...trying to remember the names of those in other rooms nearby...so many new parts of the family, it felt like a small town had come together last night in the living room, spilling into the kitchen and kids a constant chain between the two parts of the house.  It was a bit cold outside so a fire was made and soon the house was beyond warm, folks opening doors and windows to bring some relief.

He had stayed mostly by her side but at times she was directly across from him...she knew of course everybody...and they regarded him with some bit of curiosity but mostly they left him alone...he was okay with that.  He kept getting up to replenish his drink and she always held out her empty glass for him to fill as well.  

The kitchen, despite being crowded, was efficient and the vodka and the bourbon were out on the counter near the ice-maker.  He could sometimes hear her laugh and he found himself smiling...

What's so funny? a strange voice asked him, and he realized it was an elder lady and he couldn't remember her relationship.

Ah....it's nothing really.

She regarded him a little, her head tilted...she was looking up at him.

Well maybe the cat's got your tongue?

He poured the drinks and found the cranberry and added a splash to his.

I just heard her laughing out there and it made me feel at home.  

The lady seemed to accept the answer and wandered back out to the other parts of the house.  He went to go hand off the drink.

Later that evening they found a reason to go upstairs, both slightly slurring their words, both slightly tripping on the first step up the stairs. When they arrived at their room they collided with a clash of teeth and some furious resistance from their clothes...they exhausted one another quickly, the world outside just far enough away...and they remained naked in bed, falling asleep....only to wake up and conjoin again....they kept it up until the final time at 4am.  

She hadn't stirred yet...so he put on his clothes (jeans and a tee shirt) and tried to quickly sneak downstairs...he wasn't hungover..just tired.

He found the coffee and started a pot, listening to it drip and he heard a noise behind him.  It was the same old lady from the night before, she held a cup of tea in her hand and she sat down.

Good morning, he offered, a kind of whisper in the quiet kitchen.

Mmmm-hmmmm she responded, taking a sip of her tea.  He blinked at the response and turned to the decanter which was now filled...he poured himself some coffee and then he found himself unable to control himself...so he said Cat got your tongue?

The old lady looked up at him with a tiny smile.

You two were awfully noisy last night she said.

He almost spit out his coffee. He nodded, like knowingly...mumbled sorry and took up two cups of coffee to their room.  She was stirring, moving to her back and propping herself up on her elbows...she saw the look on his face.

what's wrong?

He smiled, almost laughed...I don't think we can ever leave this room.

Time Zones

What made him approach bedtime with a sly comfort was the fact that perhaps at this same fine hour she might be doing the exact same thing as him...sipping on bourbon.

The beauty of time zones is she could rise in her early state and give him a call and wake him...hear his raspy husk as he emptied the cobwebs in his mind...her bright early morning voice full of vigor and awakeness...and he would imagine her beside him and he would tell her so...and in the cold quiet of her car in a rising dawn she could likewise imagine.

There was a slight window when in fact they could be enjoying bourbon together with such distance in-between...maybe 8pm Eastern, 11pm Pacific....each hour making it harder to coincide.

And if the time slipped past 9 pacific he knew she was asleep...and that gave him some comfort.

Sometimes he could not tell where she started and where the bourbon ended...both gave him such solace....

when together it was the perfect elixir...she and the glass of spirits the color of her eyes...

But when apart he understood the riptide current of her...the pull...the drowning sensation. 

She was as much a part of his day as an hour...she may have become her own time sense...when he thought about her...when he didn't....candidly if she were to be compared to a time measure it would probably best be measured in minutes as there was no such thing as an hour length when he didn't think of her.

So she rendered time zones moot...they didn't matter.

Rather, he filled his day with thoughts of her...spontaneous...or sometimes logical via a text or email...
Like a sun that you rise to and notice but throughout the day it's just there...you don't seek it...you know it's around...but there is a part of you that yearns for it, particularly in fall and winter...and seeing it reminds you of it.

That was her.

She was there...even if only in his memory...every few minutes or so...and even closer with every sip he took.

Short Playlists

Her gateway drug was Patron...the path was to Heaven.
Chilled, almost as ice-cold as you could make it...where the viscosity of the liquor slowed into an almost Mercury-like spill...until she poured it into a shot glass brimmed with the thickest and glass-like salt crystals...and then thrust it back into her mouth like a dare...followed by a full on kiss that was a mix of the salt and the lemon she crunched after downing the fire.  It was like a first kiss on a beach with a sunburn...and ice cream dripping down your hands and you knew that her length was against you and you could feel her falling into you and then...she would draw away...the Tequila pulsating through your brain like it was inserted by a needle into your carotid artery...with pulse-quickening stares and a bit of salt still on your lips.

and later, with laughter...in the bed that was unbelievably large and stacked with soft white pillows and cool white sheets and you would feel the granules of salt against your skin and wonder how the fuck they ever got in the bed in the first place....and then you'd spy that lemon rind on the stand beside you...and you'd remember...and you'd have a short laugh to yourself as your brain settled back down like a leaf landing in Autumn.

He never met her father...never had the chance.  Nobody's fault except time and circumstance.
But he imagined...as he rode the great ferry across the vast brown expanse that he would be troubled...because he wasn't known.  Except by her.


He imagined a firm grip in a handshake...met with kind eyes after hard labor years...many others coming before him, many others rising to greet him and introduce and then say I'd ask your permission...
But she was the youngest of the group and despite her admonitions he always felt her father favored her the most...because of what she was...who she became.  Life on the farm, the peninsula...a chore but a pleasure...a task but a gift.

He never met her father...but each day he felt the strength of her, the composure...the gifts she brought to each day.

She never mentioned her father to him, except in his passing.  It was like they held a huddled conversation and then it went into the vault.

He wished he could have walked across that stretch of lawn...with leaves on the grass and the sun behind them...softening the day...this day of intrusion as he strode...and watched her father get up from his chair...a gentleman...and extend his hand. 

He imagined that would have been a very lovely moment.





It was the tub that parboiled their lives together.

Like a recipe from a grandmother's cookbook with carefully added ingredients, the perfect time and temperature just marinated them enough into perfection.

The casual glance across bubbles...the vulnerability of complete and utter nakedness...the comfort in disrobing...quiet gestures in silence...the removal of a belt and socks...the unhinging of a bra...the slide of pants and then exposure...walking deerlike into the heat of the waters....slowly...letting the heat pink the skin...

Curl the tips of hair finding the surface...slicking back the hair and letting pinks rise in cheeks.

Slippery.

Colors beneath the waters...clear and shimmering.

The splash of collision when coming together.  Kiss me in the middle, meet me in the halfway point of the tub...then retreat and lean against the sides...the slow drip from the spigot the only noise...as I get to watch the extremes of you...outlined against the bubbles and the warming waters.

You fill me like these hot waters, pouring into the vessel of me...abiding me and surrounding me in your clutch, your safe and elixir-like impact...the steam making me sweat a little but it's mostly due to proximity...your nude warm body beckoning...I steep against you...releasing stress and distractions...together in the tub we form a tea...our bodies simmering, resting...comforting.

Just add lemon....wait....no...that's for the Patron.



She was beautiful in the daylight...in full sun. 

She was exquisite in an evening...contours and angles...she possessed such a delicate slope, her face an artist's rendition of perhaps an angel...or perhaps a temptress...he could never tell because he had succumbed to it so long ago...

In the dark she was a scent and a mouth, a breath...an inhalation...hurrying...pulling, colliding.  Undoing, and unmasking.  He knew she was there, felt her...but couldn't see her.  But absorbed her.

Husk in a voice, a demand, a response...requests and compliance.  Instructions and chaos.  Movement and to's and throes...throes...

But in candlelight? 

Her softness shone through...her smile...quiet gazes...the landscape of her...like a world he had never explored...the salt of her oceans...the valleys and inclined hills...symmetry...he fit into her and she fit around him...

in the candlelight it was the time before night and day...neither side won.  Rather it was a time when the flame burned slightly on the outside but mostly from the inside of them.  Us.

It was hotter than the wick.

Wednesday

He had never gotten a tattoo...he'd thought about it, contemplated it, researched the designs and the colors.  He knew many people who possessed the skin art...and even found a certain beauty in those confident enough to decorate themselves with ink.

Part of his reluctance was the permanence...despite newer ways to erase or change the original he felt that his commitment wasn't quite there...he found it an interesting conundrum.

They had spoken about getting simultaneous versions...they debated what they would design...letters, colors...where they would allow the skin to be touched...revealed.

In the end they did nothing...not because there wasn't a desire...rather he thought that there was nothing to be added to him that would ever come close to reminding him of her.  It was that simple.

She was a long hallway of art in his mind, a timeline of interactions and touches, sometimes the art shifted and sometimes it gathered dust...the hallway easily a hundred miles long, filled with images and prints like a feature length film unrolled and laid end to end.  Such a hallway would be lit with candles, to soften the frames, and capture the exact details...sometimes there was no light at all...

She had built this hallway in bits and pieces, starting small and hesitantly.  There were gaps...wall space unadorned.  Then a bunch together.  This went on and on.  Sometimes the art was small...like a cryptic handwritten note...other times it was large, occupying the whole wall with its bold strokes and combinations.  Each one had meaning...history.  Each seemed to build upon each other but sometimes there were departures and backsteps...crude art that evolved into complex. 

He could visit it whenever he wanted...daily, hourly...nightly.

And when departing he always blew out whatever candle was providing the light in the hallway...and even in complete darkness he could still see the entire collection...but mostly he could feel it.

Could never forget it.

Tuesday

Accents usually appeared when someone was tired or drinking...their passion and enthusiasm revealed by the tunes from their throat and then some long ago versions of pronunciations arrived and a word would come out with a specific regional sound.

Hers came out when she was tired...or stressed...the vowels lengthened...the words stretched and slowed...her southerness spilled out of her in those moments and in those moments he felt like he was knowing who she was long before they ever met.

It was particularly noticeable when she rarely but occasionally called him "fool"...he knew it was just a reaction, almost muscle-memory but it came out easily and in her southern roots it came out "fewwwwl" and he loved it despite its disparagement.

It melted his mind when she said certain words...like butter on toast.

Or when she wore her hair up.

Or dispensed with a bra.

But mostly it was the sweet night tone of her voice...when tired it dropped an octave...when animated or debating a particular topic it rose.  Somehow.

Her voice was her barometer, taking measurements and indicating...it was dove-quiet in the mornings, early, her body still waking...almost child-like.

She was one of the very few people who mastered the word "Hi"...she said it as a greeting in the morning, like a stranger meeting somebody for the first time...she murmured it after making love when they drew close, blinking in the afterwards, in the quiet, the sudden deep quiet after the sweet interactions...she would whisper it, softly, delicately...innocently.

Somewhere butter bubbled in a pan...her impact on him.

He hadn't really heard her voice in anger...sometimes troubled, sometimes stressed due to something she cared painfully for...and sometimes she cried...but she rarely let him hear her voice tinged with madness or rage.

He wondered if her accent came out in those moments...but he was fine with being called a "fool"...

Particularly if he was just hers.

Mondays

Half the battle of an early morning departure to the airport is just the simple fact that the weekend is over...and work looms like a specter around the corner, gnashing teeth and claws.

He awoke in the cold and padded to the shower, the steam blooming...his hands found soap and his skin was suds and her remembered the last time her skin had born the same soapy slipperiness...his mind was a fog from that encounter, her frame enveloped in bubbles, pink parts evident, her hair darker where wet...she had been laughing and there had been a debate about the exact amount of bubble bath needed to achieve optimum results:  revealing just a little, but not too much.  But not totally obscuring.

He turned off the shower and pulled the towel from the overhang...the shower had briefly raised the temperature but he was cooling off quickly.

He departed in the morning when the sun was still asleep and the air was a mix of grays and whites...supremely quiet, just the sound of his shoes on the pebbles to the car.  The big vehicle and driver were early and he was thankful to be setting off maybe early enough to avoid bad traffic.

The exhaust of the SUV plumed behind it...and he could see his breath when he exhaled.

He remembered the first few kisses, stolen in a freezing afternoon...it had been sleeting, and it was the exact opposite of the temperature in his mind which was ravenously heated and smoldering...the way her cold lips parted into a warm mouth and when they finally pulled away their exhalations were puffy white clouds that mingled, just as they were before. 

He stepped into the car, the heat already on and warming him...but from the outside in...not like her, who caused it from within.

The driver asked if he wanted any music or news and he shook his head...he was in a delicate balance now...the lingering effects of waking early, the slow rising thoughts of her like a dawn on the horizon of his brain and the sky outside still staying steel colored.  As they drove the lane he saw the day lightening a little, and against the trees and the forest little spaces of fog emerged, like thoughts blossoming in a cartoon...contrasting against the dark colors and making artificial light.

He glanced at his watch...it was still early...but he hoped somewhere out there she was waking, maybe turning onto her back and blinking slowly, trying to start her day in a much better way but still tackling the first day...and thus the worst day of the week.

He smiled as he thought about speaking with her soon and settled back into his warm leather seat, the fog outside and in his brain starting to dissipate.

In the early hours of a Monday.

Drop Seat Pajamas

The topic of her ass wasn't a daily conversation...in fact it was infrequent at best.

But one night over a pool table in a crowded bar before Christmas she wore a tight Yoga pants-like outfit and every time she bent over the table he couldn't help but see the delicate arc and the tightening of the material...

so of course he had to grab it...and not in a soft cradling motion but in a feisty grip, a handful of her ass that was tight and supple...she let out a little yelp and pulled away, but he felt like he had discovered another piece of her...quite literally, but he had never paid it proper attention.

So now he did...not in a cavalier way...but rather in appreciation...like when she walked away...or was turned from him...he just had never appreciated her art, both front and back like he did now.

And as materialistic as it sounded he never really considered these new portions of her...but increasingly he kept imagining her walking on the beach, in the smallest of clothes...and in his mind he kept making her walk ahead of him...he had always loved her gait...but now adding in the portions of her that he hadn't truly appreciated...well...

until now.

So when the topic of Christmas gifts emerged he had one very specific idea to run by her...and it was when she got mad.

It was an evening and there had been hail...a torrential whitewash sheet of rain and ice and it was bitterly cold outside...you could hear the pounding on the roof and the windows.  He had been leafing through a catalog and had come across onesie pajamas...the old school kind that were made of wool and had buttons up the front and a drop seat in the back.

He made some sort of flippant comment about "easy-access" and he realized she was pissed.  Her quiet spoke volumes, her short curt answers were like tiny cuts.  She didn't like any debate, she felt like he could form arguments faster and it would just make her angrier.  He set the catalog on the table.

She had gone up to take a bath, usually later in the evening but tonight earlier.  The bathroom had been their own design...an entry area with mirrors with light-settings and then a long tiled walk to a larger room with a massive claw tub with room for more than the two of them.  It had classic lines and a classic spigot...it filled with hot water quickly and there was a large window above it, high enough so that they could see out but nobody could see in...it could frost with the touch of a switch.  Mostly though she kept a candle lit and watched the moon.

Unless it was storming.  Like tonight.

Don't objectify me she said as he entered...two glasses of bourbon in his hands...redundant as she already had one near her.

I'm sorry...you know I have never done that.

Pause.

You're obsessed with my ass.  

He took a drink...bobbed his head a little to and fro.

Actually, I'm obsessed with your body in general...I'm just expanding the definitions.

She reached over for her glass and took a sip.  I just thought you'd never go there with a gift...even all the things you've gotten me in the past...they were never about my body...well, maybe a few...but long ago.  Now...it's just--

I know....I'm sorry...I discovered a bit of a new place and I'm claiming it all my own!  Like an explorer!

My ass isn't new America.

God no...it's way smaller.

She let out a little laugh.  Then please no pajamas with the hole in the back...

It's not a hole he started but saw the look in her eyes.

Okay....he knelt by the tub, still filled with bubbles and exhaling a lovely lavender scent.

All of this she said, waving her hand across her body...has a real chance of changing...and I don't want you stuck on a particular part that may or may not grow or change or get worse or whatever...don't let me just be a body for you.

He reached over to her, pulled a little on her chin to make her look at him...her hair was partially in the tub, darkening in the wetness...and outside it was howling and thrashing at the window, white ghost-like colors of ice beating against the glass.

Your eyes will never change...and to me that is the part that I find the most attractive.

The First Frost

She awoke to the smell of bacon in a room growing slowly lighter, the shadows going from black to gray to an almost pale white...she rolled onto her back and pulled the hair away from her eyes.  She blinked, wondering if she was hungover and determined she wasn't...rather it was the lack of sleep...and she smiled, remembering looking at the clock when she finally collapsed against him, her mouth stung from the hours of being against his...being against him. 

The clock has said 3:34am. 

She closed her eyes and sighed, wishing she could conjure up a coffee...when she heard his footsteps returning.

He carried a small tray with a white cup of coffee and a glass flute with a Mimosa...he set it down, leaned over to kiss her briefly and told her he had to return to the kitchen.  Inside her something flared when he leaned over her, she tasted his toothpaste clean kiss and returned to the pillows.  The smell of the coffee warmed her but she reached for the flute first, the cold bubbles waking her further and the slight bit of alcohol a perfect continuation from the evening before.

The evening before...

It was cold, the type of wind that reminds you that Fall is fleeting and Winter is waiting...that evening was supposed to be the first frost of the year...the leaves stuck to each other by tiny fragile bits of ice.  The crunch beneath boots reminded her of her childhood as she walked to the barn to help her dad...

The sun rise in the smokey fog of a Fall morning...the licks of warmth barely enough to touch the skin, the tiny wet drops of the frost gleaming and then returning back into the earth.

He was like that, she supposed...a morning to wash upon her...if her day was encased in a slight layer of cold...of frost...he would appear and slowly she would warm and return...the bits of cold fading, falling from her.

She never felt warmer than she did now...well maybe last night...but here, in the first Frost morning of the year she burrowed in the sheets, pulled the blanket up against her and closed her eyes for a little bit longer, the scent of the coffee still drifting across her, the Mimosa now gone and her voice getting ready to call him to come join her at least one more time.

Acquisition

She took little pieces each time...small, almost indiscernible...almost able to be overlooked.

Each part not enough to matter if left alone...but when two became three...then four...it started a small shape, something forming.

Her presence and then her absence, an uneven pendulum...a back and forth that was clumsy...she was there and then she simply wasn't...the space she occupied gone, maybe a slight lingering in the air but other than that she was departed.

With just another tiny piece.

And another day or week would pass...a month.

Sometimes her voice would try to steal a part but it wasn't as effective...he could feel the tug, a slight pull like that of a child's hand, and he could contain it...keep it. 

But in person she always won...she could yank and snatch and he couldn't hold on...he also wasn't sure how hard he tried...

this acquisition of hers...

her slowly accumulating the pieces of him...


until she had fully acquired and possessed.

Her

Wake me.

Find me.

Let her walk upon my thoughts like an easy stroll.  Open the gate, unlock the door...let the key fall and wander...

That is what she did mostly...let me wander...explore...new worlds, new continents.

Risk.

Reward.

Let her spread across me.  Hot butter on english muffins.

Probe parts of my brain I don't know or expect.  Make me warm...make me uncomfortable.

A release.

A conjecture.

I feel her even when apart.

I crave her even after being satiated.

I try to breathe her in...if she'll let me.

Mostly it's just minutes...the shards of a day to cut and remind...tiny scars and bits of pain...separations and departures...

And then rejoin...come together.

I wonder why seasons take so long to change...because I find her in so many days that fill them.

Familiarity

It was fall in the South.

The first bit of frost...the first bits of a morning where your breath would cloud and the cold of a car seat was palpable.

But she knew the backroads like the back of her hand...an easy turn of the wheel as she drove home.

What was new was him.

She was avoiding this collision...the old and the new confronting each other like the spill of waves on a beach...intractable...inevitable.

She knew the smell of the inside of the house like a scent long burned into her...she knew the porch that was just an open enclave between the portions of the home screened in with a fire place was where the most open conversations happened...

The smoke of long dead fires filled her lungs...she remembered talks and laughs...her father and his voice.

And now a new voice was in her world...different.

It wasn't bad...it was just new.

How would she introduce...how would she invite?

She drove the back roads and she wanted a cigarette...she wondered if the store was open.  If she could pull in, leave the car running and go in, pull out some dollars and buy some smokes.

She did.

The white wash of the lights of the store were blinding...against the orange of the evening...

She sat in her car with the window down...smoking.

Wondering how she could introduce the new world. 

Hey, he said...sitting next to her.

She turned.

He was there, the smoke around him, like a bit of a crown.

He was a frame...a shape.  Like when you buy cut-outs for Christmas cookies his shape imprinted upon her heart, creating things she could bake...could linger upon...she could put some colors and and sugars and it would be sweet.

But when he kissed her it was the commingling of smoke and candy...her heart was wondering what was in the past and the newness of the reveal.

She laid back in the car and watched the dashboard lights.  They looked like the color in the sky.

Dune Moon

Come here

He was inside the kitchen, putting ice into the martini shaker while the bottle of Stoli Elite was next to the sink and because she had wanted to share it there was a bottle of cranberry next to it...he didn't mind sharing...it really became just an issue of portion-control...how much of this beautiful vodka would he pour so that the end result was just a slight pinkish color...

Hang on a sec he replied...wiping his ice wet hands on a towel and moving towards the sound of her voice. 

(The sound of her voice was like what Autumn might sound like...southern, slightly nuanced, maybe deeper with drinks...it was tinged with what you would hope to hear near a fireplace at the end of the evening, mostly embers smoldering, but still giving radiant heat...it was close to the tumble of ice melting in bourbon, the alchemy of liquor and water blending into a perfection combination)...much easier than guessing about the right amount of vodka and cranberry.

He found her at the edge of the patio, yards from the beach...it was still warm but the breeze was up, enough to pull her hair away from her slightly...

Look at that...he thought he heard her say...because she almost whispered it.  In front of him, past the dunes and sea grass was the early rise of the moon, almost orange as it peeked through the sunset...battling its much bigger planet sun who was reluctant to give up the day.

Her back was turned to him...he could see where she was sunburnt on one shoulder, the strap of her bathing suit not covering a bit of skin and it was a crimson that looked like it might hurt...he made a mental note to bring aloe to the bedroom.  Her arms where across her chest, her hands holding her sides and she was slightly tilted, her eyes bringing in the evening.

The waves were a white noise and he felt suddenly very relaxed...he drifted alongside of her, coming actually right behind her so he could rest his chin on her shoulder...he reached out with one arm and pulled her against him. 

what were you doing in there?

I was about to make us a drink.

Oh yeah?  Like what.

I figured a martini...you know, to relax us.

He felt her exhale...a cleansing breath actually...it was deep, and he felt her shoulders relax.

I don't need a drink...this is my alcohol waving her arm across the front of her, the moon moving from orange to white as it slowly climbed.

He turned her towards him, moving her gently like a dance-turn.  She was looking at him, mirth in her eyes as she looked up at him, her arms still folded across her chest.

And I don't need a fucking gorgeous sunset he said, staring back at her, when this is my view.

Falling

It is the way an evening retreats, a reluctant pose that one normally finds when a loved one turns and walks away...

She was just there, just a fine minute ago...she was engulfed in your arms, her hair blowing in the beach breeze, the scent of the tide and her shampoo floating into you and it was against the small crashing of waves in their constant punishment upon the beach...

She was just there, you could feel the slight weight of her leaning against you, the slight pressure of her breasts upon your chest, the taste of her mouth and the breath in your ear...words couldn't be whispered, it was too loud near the water...rather she would have to put her mouth almost upon you, murmuring the words that you did not want to hear.  A goodbye...a departure.

Goodbye...goodnight.  Seemingly the same...goodbye sun...goodnight moon.

But in her departure there was no smear across the sky with her, it was just a vanishing...she looked back once, turned and left.  It was just under a minute.

At least the sky gave the courtesy of lingering...faintly...taking its time...loitering...spreading its departure across colors. 

Her goodbye was abrupt...not slow at all...despite their attempts to fend it off...she unmelted from him, slowly becoming unencumbered...slowly exiting, her arms from around him...locked then unlocked...against him then not against him, slowly letting her hands fall down his arms until their fingers grazed each other and with a slight quick tight squeeze they became undocked...no longer one.

A few steps and she was away from him...getting darker in the view...smaller...until gone...while the night sky was fighting with the oranges of the sunset...way above them.

He couldn't quite see her...she was a shape, a walk that was familiar, even while moving away from him...and he didn't notice the colors in the air because whatever he could describe as stunning...incandescent...was slowly walking away from him, falling into the darkness leaving a much brighter image in his mind even as the evening roared in winds and tides and skies.

Love Letter

There is an antique store near old highway 20 and the intersection where all that construction is taking place...you know the one.

Inside in the dusty musk and Coca-Cola sign replicants there is a wall, with frames across it like a museum...varying sizes, shapes and even the wood colors are different.  But inside each is a page from a love letter...the paper turning the color of sand, the ink fading in parts...but goddamn, the words...

The words...

"If I never loved again it is because you were the completest part of me, the skeletal part of me that allowed me to walk this earth, roam an afternoon and be free unlike any time by myself..."

"I close my eyes hurrying myself to sleep, begging and praying for just the slightest chance or even slight perception that I might catch nary a glimpse of you"

"I am far, the furthest I have ever been...closer seemingly to the sun and stars...I see them much brighter now and in the vast amount of darkness and night I cannot believe how ugly they appear when I make the comparison of your countenance...you eclipse even what God has so studiously made."

"I no longer pray for my safe return...I fear it is a faithless prayer and one deemed selfish and willful.  Rather...in any way or capacity, I long to return to you in one form or another...a cold dead man, a wounded hurt person or even a ghost who can occasionally peek and see you...just even briefly...slightly...that is what I now pray for and I feel more comforted...more alive in the hope that that is something the Divine can provide more realistically...and to my benefit."

"I will always seek you in these new crowds, a hint of your sculpture, a color similar in hair...a gait or a gesture remarkable...sometimes it is even a voice, and at other times it is a piano.  I see you in the passers-by, I see you in the puddled streets of rain...I see you in the most common things that are comforting and held in my hands...and maybe I will ultimately find you amongst all the things that remind me of you so that you truly and actually are there."

"I watched two lovers pass by...one could tell...the slight angles towards each other...the casual laughs...the belonging.  I think it is the sense of belonging that binds them that reveals their truest emotion...it is comfort...fitting...key into lock, candle to match...they were useful to each other...making a completely separate one whole...one could tell just by watching them walk.  O I do wish that is how we appear when we glide"

"I don't have a lot of time and am in need of additional ink that I will strive to find upon the next town...it is cold and it is quiet..but in my heart it is emblazoned and beating to a rhythm that I might be dancing...it is the only time because I can stop and provide thoughts to you and my pen quivers because it will do no justice...rather it will be a letter but to me it is fire...it is a glow...it is hot coals and it is warming and I wish I could pen you longer"

"I didn't say I love you enough..not near enough...breakfast, afternoon...I didn't take the time to convey what I was feeling when I awakened and when I closed my eyes...that single rapture presence that you provided and I fear I could return soon and still be in a deficit...so I will try to say I love you a thousand times a day and hope that a wind will pick them up and maybe make its way to you so that when I return I am halfway to telling you that I love you"

"I hear murmurs of a battle tomorrow...I will do my very best and fight alongside some of the bravest men I have ever known...but I will carry your name on my lips and even if light extinguishes in me the very last sound I will utter, with the very last breath in my chest...will be my love for you."

"You have ruined me for love...you have marked me and made me unworthy of anyone else...I will not be able to administer even the slightest affection for even the most sought-after debutante...I am penned and anointed to be yours...even if you dispel me.  Even if shunned I would be forced to walk the earth like Mosley's chains in Dickens with a spell of you upon me...nobody could ever accept me because I would always have you alongside, even if only in my mind...the two of us forever entwined...and no other would be able to bear the crowd of us...you, me...them.  Your ruination is the best thing that has ever happened to me."

I only wish I could convey like those departed souls could correspond.

Folly Beach

It was the sea air that he noticed...in the very early morning near the pier.  Even this late in the year, when most of the leaves were starting to turn up north the sea smelled like summer, not loosening up its grip on the warmth and the sun still waiting to rise above the slick black oil ink of the Atlantic.

She was near...it was one of those intuitions of proximity...like sometimes how the air would change before a thunderstorm.  She was like that at times...exploding in his head and deluging his thoughts with just a constant...her.  Her.

Her. 

As he watched the brief quickening of orange scratching away the morning's dark, he felt her more than anything else.  Like a locket around his neck.  It wasn't heavy...rather it was quite light...but he felt it as surely as if she had placed it there.

His car was illegally parked right at the tide line...thankfully it was going out and the engine still ticked from the long drive in the evening. 

He wasn't going to her...rather he just wanted to be close enough to feel...a moon to her planet...a gravitational pull...proximity. 

He actually wanted to just drive by where she might be staying, driving slowly enough that she might look up, might glance...and across the fifty feet or so she might widen her eyes in surprise and wonder...but not really believe.  And go back to her doings.

He was an interruption while she played like music in the background.  A soft relaxing song that he could hear without repetition.  He sometimes broke things and then used them clumsily. 

He wanted to cook for her, break into the kitchen at this ungodly hour and awaken her with smells of bacon and coffee...watch her bed-head hair emerge and greet him like a sunrise.

She was like that, actually as he watched a real one emerge and beckon the clouds to slowly dissipate and start spreading shades the color of warmth across the East.

She was the start of his day...no matter where she was...east, west.

She was the emergence of something warm and far away...beautiful but almost out of reach...he rose out of bed with her out there and him knowing that was her...a presence.  A morning...a fresh start, a new clock...

He didn't know when she would actually awaken...he hoped it would be when the sun was slightly higher so he waited, watching the shade pull up on the day...half expecting the local police to shoo him from his spot and hand him a hefty fine.

But for now the morning was his alone...alone on the beach and for all he could see alone in the world.
Except he knew she was close.
And as he watched the orange circle start its rise he knew that even if she was across the opposite of where he was, hundreds or thousands of miles away,

he would feel the lure of her...the pull.  The tide tugging you into the ocean, towards something beautiful.

4 Roads out of Wakefield

He was driving down Route 460, the long leg of the widest road headed southeast out of Petersburg, where the dark path of the evening was interrupted occasionally by a few deep southern small towns...Disputanta...Waverly...part of the three cities named by General Mahone that included Wakefield which was his marker tonight...his last place to arrive.

It was the first weekend of fall, the evening still struggling to let go of summer.  Warm ocean-tinted air flew into the windows and he kept the windows down...and the radio up, blaring Amos Lee on a satellite radio station.  She was interwoven into his thoughts as deeply as the humidity clogged the air, impossible to separate and irresistible to worry.

A smattering of headlights from the opposing way illuminated now and again...but mostly he had the road alone to himself.

He was driving to apologize.

To walk up to her, perhaps reach out and grab a hand...maybe both...and just utter his repentance.

Pluck words and more words like slivers stuck in her heart and extract them...one by one.  Set them aside and burn them later.  Kiss the little holes they left and stop any bleeding. 

He pushed the car a little faster.

Wakefield straddles 460 in an almost pentagon shaped county way, with route 603 heading due south towards the Big Woods Wildlife area...and routes 603 and 617 heading north towards the James River.  He had never spent enough time down there to truly drive around and notice the names and the numbers...but 460 had always kept him company. 

Well...she did too.

She was as uncomplicated as the tides on the James River...she came, she went...she moved when the moon was closer...but she sometimes kept him in her shallows...not really allowing him to plumb her depths that he knew were there...as deep as the drop off as the ledge when the James met the Atlantic out past Hampton.

Lights from a far off ship...that's what he sometimes called her.  He knew she was there, far...and he could detect the faintest sign...

But unlike the horizontal metals of an ocean-bound freighter she was more nuanced with curves and angles, she shimmered like the thousand-dimes ocean top, she laughed in a deeply southern silk, and she let her bourbon-colored eyes get him drunk with infatuation. 

Smitten.  It was a good word...and as a few night bugs painted his windshield, drawn by the stark illumination of his headlights he vaguely empathized as he knew what it was like to chase such bright and beautiful objects.

He sliced through the evening wondering what she was doing...what she was wearing...he had called her and told her he was coming...she had been neutral...a Switzerland in this deep state of Virginia this evening. 

It was like he had hit his thumb with a hammer...it was a miscue.  A misstep.  He had worked all his life to master words with his mouth and his pen...and he wielded them at times like a razor.  Carelessly. 

And he had cut her.

He hoped not too deeply.  Not too scarring.  But enough to draw blood, maybe more than when a splinter gets pulled out roughly.

He simply hoped that his rough hewn words could be soothed over....generally the way she had soothed his own tiny spurs. 

The air smelled faintly of a dinner and he realized he was coming upon the diner at the edge of Wakefield...a parking lot filled with comfort food seekers and people content in an evening with each other.

He knew her place was coming up in a bit and shifted in his seat. 

He hoped he could content her this evening just as well.