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.