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.