Grief

 

He was far from her.  

Distance and geography...time zones and weather patterns...the pandemic already well underway and worsening with the advent of Fall.  

Isolation...is what it felt like.  Not quite a prison because there weren't any walls...free to walk about, free to go outside.  

She hated change...disruption.  A process was what she favored, predictability.  Numbers adding up, tallying up items so they made sense.  

So in a time when nothing made sense, when nothing added up, she potentially was at her most frustrated state when a cold dark shiver was placed inside her and tore her gut into a place she hadn't had to visit...for some time.

And like the tiniest of pin pricks it drew tears as easily as if drawing blood.

And he was far from her.

At a time when she needed him to fit.  The way when they greeted each other, her chin perfect into his shoulder.  Needed his voice to just calm her pettiest of fears, her frustrations...the sheer lunacy of the randomness of this whole episode.

One day you're talking to someone...and the next you are hearing they have left this world.  No warnings, no head's up...just some lightning in a clear blue day suddenly immolating something...someone...right near you.  You can feel...you can fucking feel the absence.  You can feel the pull away from you viscerally, like some civil war surgeon clumsily chopping off a limb.  It stirs an ache you didn't realize you possessed.

She needed him to fit.

And he was far.

No amount of calls or texts would help.

So he knew that she would paddle into the kitchen, perhaps already dark in the Virginia countryside in late October, and uncork the bottle of bourbon and take it to the glass already stacked with ice.  And she would take the first few sips and like those first few tears they would fall into her...watching the windows, the blackening outside and it would look like she felt...empty and cold...the sun unfairly gone with no colors, the only sound the clink of the bourbon...

Before she finished her glass she poured more to refill it.  This time she raised it slightly and murmured some words that only she could hear.

So he did the same...poured a little into a glass with no ice...but tried to push stars into her direction, tried to push dreams into her mind, tried to rewind the sun in the sky and maybe just create a bit of a distraction for her.

He was far....but in his mind he was fitting her into him.

Fall, apart

It is time for her to draw the tub, and gently turn the hot water knob an extra twist...the air outside in the blackness carries wind and the smell of fires.  Little bouts of steam ascend as the waters pool, the heated water against the cold porcelain of the bath.  She places her head against a window and sees a few chimneys emptying with ghostly smoke that is white in the air.  Her breath fogs the window and she writes a name before smearing it gone.

It has been a long time since she has knelt in front of a fire, loading smaller sticks and kindling, the flames licking eagerly at the dry rot wood...consuming the sticks and creating the bed of embers needed.  He had been consumed by her in a similar way, the slow let of dry tinder easing its way into her world...like a tiny string that caught flame and hurried its way upwards towards the hand that held it.

And in these last full days of Summer, the dark coffers of the fireplace lay dry, darkened from the heat of past days and nights, a tattoo of a time when it rose incandescent.  Warming the room, drawing the eye...the way she would in the days past.

Driving past muddy fields, of exhausted hay, the smudged earth just tired...the sun low in the sky and already getting darker earlier each day...the crisp wind is biting, no longer any respite...now it stings and hisses, wrapping cold hands around your neck and clutching you to make you cold.

Another car ahead, taillights in the distance...people heading home, returning to friends, families...a lover.  He hated the absence...the distance.  He felt stale...stalk of corn-like, rustling in the breeze, burnt out by the sun, merely waiting to fall over in the field and be consumed by the earth.  He wanted to feel her, the entrance of her cold feet into his bed, her cold hands coming for his torso, the invasion of her morning air body meeting his overnight sleep warmth temperature.  Her teeth sometimes even chattering in his ear as her nakedness slowly pooled from cold to warm...her porcelain skin slowly starting to glow, the heat raising briefly her temperature...

Like the warming waters of her tub...which she stirred with her toes, naked in the bathroom, the waters almost too hot to sit in but it was too cold to stand.  

She poured in some handful of salts, and stirred them further...the scent of filigree rising...it smelled nothing like Fall...it smelled what he smelled like when they were together.

 

Gliese 433

Somebody discovered this through a long lens...a planet...an interstellar body in the heavens.

Dear lord, are you my undiscovered terrestrial orb.

You represent discovery, uncharted territory...assumptions, admissions.

I look longingly into a black abyss sky...unencumbered by the storms of summers, the clouds of hurricanes...the heavy humidity of the south.

If you do exist...what could you mean?

Your fleeting celestial presence comforts me...you are out there...orbiting my world.

(It is my problem if I dream about you only to have science completely validate you)

I wonder about your oceans, your waters...your hemispheres and your time zones.  Things I have wrangled about with you.

I want to discover life.

I want to discover life with you.

Must I travel the speed of light to find you...the break from gravity and physics and shit I don't understand to simply be near you...in your gravitational pull.

God you know you draw me in.  

You allure me.

Telescopes would love to seek you out...your brightness, your hiddenness...your sudden appearance.

You are hard to find.  You are hard to make out.  It takes a squint.  

I gaze at the heavens, remembering when I gazed upon the languid sketch of you...in repose.  In a bed...that may have been the Milky Way and you were the sole blinking star.  A rapture.

I revel in the science of the discovery of a new star, a new planet.

I recall the same sensation when I found you. 

Ante Meridiem

It is the distance to the door.  It is measured in feet and inches and awaiting her to cross such trivial distance is like watching somebody in the salt flats, miles away, blurry and shapeless.  It can be maddening.  Always is.

Watching her shed her outside world as she walked through the room, a coat sloughing off, a purse dropped to the floor...shoes being kicked off....she left a trail of work and pieces of everything else except him as she would greet him with her stare.

There were very few words needed in the earliest of moments of being reunited.  Mostly quiet, still with each other, soaking in the proximity.  Like the sun slowly lightening up the earth they revealed to each other in minutes, exposing themselves to each other.  Reminding them...of them.

Like the earth...in the distances between them...flatlands, low lands...some slight inclines into foothills and mountain ranges...dark earthen tones, the colors of dirt when dry...the land splitting into cracks and crevices of neglect...her appearance like a rainstorm, restorative, cleansing...glistening in the reflection of the sky. 

He rarely stayed with her.  Meaning there was always movement...to and fro.  Somebody arriving, someone departing...always.  Usually.

But some times he stayed...and invaded those personal private hours.

The bath time hour, perhaps a few minutes at night when maybe she prayed...the dark house quiet and still, head on a pillow and thoughts of a tomorrow flickering in distraction.  When he stayed those moments disappeared...for they rarely slept...instead, perhaps just as they were about to fall asleep they brushed against each other...that brush like flint and sparks...they would waken enough just to entangle...again.

Minutes skirted by...in a darkened room with no sense of up or down there was no time.  It just was.  It was just them.  No real thoughts...like noise-cancelling technology they obliterated each other's mind so it was just them...nothing else. 

And in the grogginess of awakening there was both the joy of finding each other and the low rumble of sadness tugging lightly on the horizon as an imminent departure was coming...the night ending, another day of not staying beginning.

Hair askew, eyes puffy...the glasses by the bedside, an empty bottle as well.

For a very few scant seconds it was like waking up in a dream...amazed and aware...and then a slight slump that the reality was going to be another goodbye.

But for a few minutes it was breakfast bliss, nuzzling...softly, nipping...slowly, really ever so slowly starting the day.

Evening

He drove away in the evening, dimly lit roads in the backwaters of Virginia, the air thick with humidity and heavy...you could feel the weight of it and how it layered itself upon you.

While his headlights carved yellow cuts against the darkness he remembered briefly how she layered herself upon him...a comforting sense, the rhythm of their breathing finally syncing, until they moved as one...laying in the bed, fully clothed.

He remembered getting up, leaving her calmly on the bed, the bed of her childhood in the room she grew up in...he went to the small bathroom, the tiny glass shelves with little glass bottles...he pulled one off and opened it...it smelled like lavender...it smelled like her bath water, her wet hair after a shower.  He almost put it into his pocket as a keepsake...one that he could easily pluck from his pocket and unleash her presence...

But he set it back down carefully...nothing in the room belonged to him...and he hated the notion of thievery.

He ran a hand through his hair and returned back to her room, convinced he looked presentable.

She was turned away from him, her body gently rising and falling...it was still daylight outside.

She had taken off her socks and her toes were painted a coral that she preferred...she had really beautiful feet and he teased her about wearing men's socks.  She just rolled her eyes and wore whatever she wanted.  Foot massages were usually a strategic starting point...unrolling socks past the ankle and past the arch and applying warm oil or something similar...it was like he wanted to start at the tip of her...navigate his way to her middle, nuzzle her geography and meet her where her eyes lay, gazing at him, smiling.

But for now he was content with the quiet.

It hadn't always been that way...this late afternoon of pooling colors and soothing presence.  There had been storms at times...interludes where he would beg for words to spill...for her to reveal.  At times he felt like the mysterious flower that grows in the brick...many thought it a weed, perhaps she thought it lovely...he felt like it was impossible.  He wanted so badly.

So for now he was content in the quiet.

Even the air seemed to change when she was in the same room...it was like adding a flower or lighting a scented candle...the air smelled better, it smelled cleaner.  And while maybe it was just his imagination he loved breathing it in, filling his lungs and perhaps tiny molecules from her were part of it and she became part of his oxygen.

God knows he felt it when far away...the air like a dusty haze...he hated it.

He made his way over the bed and lightly tapped her on the shoulder...she murmured something, inaudible...he withdrew. 

It was still light outside but growing dimmer.

Do you have to go? Her voice was a bit heavier with the nap.

I do.

Damn.  She turned towards him and got on one elbow.  I'll walk you out.

Nooo.  No.  Stay here...you're comfortable.  

I gotta get up anyways.  She won the battle and got up, her hair askew and slept-in looking. 

It was so nice to see you, he said.  So nice to be near.  

She nodded, something she did when she was sad versus saying anything.  It was her style, here in the daylight, fully clothed except for her shoes and socks. 

He leaned in to kiss her and she met him halfway.  It was soft, warm...and lingered just a second past being appropriate for a goodbye.

It was perfect.



Thoughts of her exploded in his mind as he drove through the night, thoughts reminiscent of the occasional firework that lit up the darkness on both sides of him as he headed north.

Summer-ish

Awaken. 

It is the start of another day.  Another twenty four hours.

The heat is settling in, like a comfortable visitor reluctant to leave...knowing it will be some time.  Awhile.

You feel as far away as the sun...

Yet the days are already getting shorter...hardly perceptible though.

What is perceived though is that our distance feels the same.  The exact same length as yesterday.
And tomorrow too.

Summer needs us to be in an evening, laying down on the hood of a pickup truck, trying to see if we can see satellites skirting across the sky.

Summer needs us to be in a hammock, with the evening blending and blurring into a cocktail of sorts, the clouds and the winds combining to form a perfect drink for us to seize.

Summer needs us to have sweat on our brow, mostly each others.

Summer needs us to watch the rolling in of storms...darkening skies after a humidity that you can taste...a flash bang grenade in the sky.  The downburst of rain...and the knowledge we are safely inside.

Summer needs us to light candles on the porch, and hear the chirps of peep frogs...the clink of ice entering a glass and the pour of some bourbon.

Summer needs us to watch fireflies...

Summer needs us to feel an evening breeze in a yellowing of the day that is neither day nor night.

Summer needs us to start each morning with a glimpse of the ocean...an unblinking sun across peaceful waters...sand still cool from the evening and the day and all of its possibilities laid at our feet.

Candy

She pulls me from so far away, lures me really, like one long strand of taffy being slowly pulled between two hands...I feel the tug of her, myself being clenched in her hand, drawn to her voice and the shape of her...across the miles, around terrain...I long for the caramel eyes.

I taste her like a tiny red Hot Tamale...the cinnamon of her...like she melted Dentyne in her mouth just before kissing me, the candy taste of her colliding, rather exploding on my lips and tongue.

I feel her in the room.

Like an appearance of the Ice Cream truck with less jarring noise...she arrives.  Endorphins release in my mind, pleasing me with anticipation. 

She offers her hands out, finding me.

Proximity.

I know what she tastes like even before she crushes herself against me.

I know what she will reveal.

I unwrap her...

She reveals.

Sweetness.

Kitty Hawk

He happened upon her.

On his next to last day of the rental week he awoke early and went for a morning run...a bit before sunrise as the summer air was bound to get heavy with humidity later in the day.  His place was adjacent to the beach so he had to run past a few homes before he took the sandy path down to the shore.

There was a thin line on the horizon...the color of rust almost...and behind him the sky was black.

Morning on a beach is like an unveiling...the rhythm of the waves like REM-sleep breathing, long, slow, constant...the sun reluctantly climbing over the horizon like it is still tired...the air becoming lighter in the dawn and perhaps a bit of a breeze to wind-sweep your hair.

Strangers congregate across the sand, some with cups of coffee in their hands, holding up phones to take videos or capture photos...he was taking a few in his half jog when he saw her standing there watching the East...no phone, no cup of coffee...one arm along her side, the other behind her back.

She glanced at him slightly as he came closer, well aware he was sweating, breathing a little heavily and also was a complete stranger.

Morning, he said, raising his hand in what he hoped was a peaceful gesture.

Good morning, she replied, her voice low and southern...she had a quick smile that she gave to him.

He didn't really know what to do...it was obvious he had been running and it was obvious that he was now stopped...he could feel the day beginning, the sky lightening in color, the shape of other people further down the beach.

He wasn't really prepared for what he said next, but he was thinking it and it formed the words in his mouth and they slid out...escaped really.

You're prettier than all of that...his hand gesturing out towards the rising dawn, a combination of pinks and yellows.  All in front of this total stranger.

She smirked...oooookay.  

Just thought you should know.  He waved and started running again, away from her, his face flushed from his idiocy, shaking his head as he ran...thinking:  really?  That's what you thought to say?

He ran at least another mile before reversing course...praying she had gone inside, away, anywhere but that spot on the beach.

He drew near to where he had last seen her...she was gone.



Later that evening he went back out to the beach, a cocktail in his styrofoam cup...he walked down the same path he had that morning...the sands were fairly abandoned by the noon-time families and there were only a few outlines of people that he could see.  He didn't look for her...he had spent the entire afternoon reflecting on his adolescent gaffe...embarrassed that he couldn't have started the conversation out like an adult...like a "hello, my name is....don't you just love mornings on the beach?"

Instead he sabotaged his own efforts by throwing her a compliment that he was certain she had heard some derivative of many, many times in her life.

She knew how pretty she was...she didn't need to hear it from some sweaty stranger.

Fuck he muttered out loud.  He was still shaking his head as he sipped at his drink.

The waves had died down and the last of the seagulls started drifting away like the colors draining from the sky behind him.  The water had gone from green to a dark gray.

Unable to control himself he started walking back towards where he had originally seen her.  He thought he knew approximately where it was...he was barefoot and in linen pants and a tee-shirt.

He didn't see her.  He turned and went back home to his rental house...the last night of his stay.



He awoke before dawn...his head foggy from lack of sleep, no lack of bourbon.  He had run every morning this week and he felt like he needed this consistency currently.  So he set out just like he had every morning...down the left street, past the near-beach houses until he found the path out onto the sand.

Overnight storms caused an ugly gray morning...no chance of a sunrise...rather just a day moving from night to gray to light gray.

He went left down the beach rather than his usual right...he was definitely not looking to encounter her.  He ran closer to the water where the sand was flatter and easier to run on.

Ahead of him, about 100 yards was another runner, at this distance a dark shape...he didn't focus on it, just stored it in his mind as he looked down ahead of him.

Minutes later he realized it was a female runner...smoothly running, ponytail swinging behind her head, dark shorts, dark top. 

He picked up speed...he wanted to create a very small window of when he would pass her in the opposite direction...he would give her a courtesy wave, like all runners do when passing.

As he got closer he saw her trudging to a walk, a deliberate slow down and then she stopped.  Her hands were on her hips and he could see the fall and rise of her chest as she caught her breath.  He kept running.  He was almost upon her...he raised his hand in a wave...was near her, next to her and was moving past...in his peripheral he saw her turning towards him.

hey

He looked back over and she had turned to face him as he went by...he slowed...came to a walk, walking backwards away from her.

I'm sorry? he said...did you say something.  She nodded.

He started to walk forward, closing the gap between them...she had a little sheen of sweat on her forehead but other than that she looked like she just walked out of her car to go into a gym.

She was even prettier than yesterday, in the gray morning with a gray slew of waves around them, her face flush from the exercise. 

He waited.

Good morning, she said...again.   That quick smile.

He kept his words intact...and in his mouth...not escaping.

I apologize for yesterday...it was such an awkward start.

Her face changed...are you taking back your compliment.  

His face now changed...no!  no, not taking back anything...it was just...it wasn't the way I probably needed to happen upon you...

That's an interesting way to put it.

Well, it was just...it was in the moment.   He pointed to the ocean, gray and cool.  I mean I wouldn't compare you to this scene...out there.  For now.  It was just a beautiful morning...and I liked the comparison of seeing you in it.

I liked the comparison too.  Thank you.

She turned and picked up her jog again...he stood there.  She was getting further away.

She turned...Come run with me a bit...

He smiled and shook his head, disbelieving. 

He caught up with her and they ran together, occasionally bumping shoulders.  Above, a bit of cloud parted and a beam of yellow shone through.  It was all very beautiful.

Make Me

The storm had announced itself on the Weather app, a slight buzz indicating a nearing potential threat of a red streak on the radar...a 90% chance of a system moving north by northeast across the little blue dot indicating where they currently were.

Currently were.  An odd place...a whim actually...an Airbnb that randomly popped up in an Instagram feed with a front porch worth sharing a few nights upon...it wasn't a beach...it wasn't near water...rather it was in the woods and looked out over some rolling hills some might call mountains in the South.

We need to go here...it was sent as a text and he was involved in a customer call so he glanced at it and went back to work...driving home he remembered her link and opened it while driving...he kind of tucked it away in the back of his mind.

She sent him another text the next day...a simple one...a single question mark.  He remembered and clicked on the link...the house was remote, it wasn't near a beach...but it had an amazing large porch with rocking chairs.

He texted back:  ok



The storm was a full on throat-barreled semi hurricane...a thunder and lightning event that featured torrential rain and over flowing gutters...

make me a drink

He was inside towel drying the last of the dinner dishes, slight music from a Sonos system in the house and he thought he heard her.

So he walked outside to the porch, where the gale was blowing...she was gently rocking, taking in the storm...she looked relaxed, her hair curling a bit in the humidity of 100%...she was barefoot in jeans and a tee shirt, no bra...also known as his favorite outfit.

could you make me a drink please?

Her voice is a note in his mind that impacts certain parts of his brain...the pleasure notes, seratonin, memories from the past...it has a husk of southern wrapping, a bit of a lower octave like he's being told a secret.  He, of course, is instantly compliant.

what are we feeling tonight?  The wind has diminished and the rain feels less intrusive...the time between lighting and thunder is growing...the storm is moving off.

bourbon.  A perfect drink for her.  She will drink it with a lot of ice.  It will warm her a little in the cooling air but it will also soften her. 

He goes to the bag that they brought and he has hidden a nice rare antique...a Pappy Van Winkle 12.  She doesn't know he brought it...knows he had it though. 

He only uses one ice cube because you cannot do that to Pappy.

Here you go, pretty.

She takes it from him...her eyes very dark in the evening...he feels their weight as he feels it every time she lingers upon him.

thank you.

She always sniffs the glass, just above the rim...it's like her hands are wrapped around a small fire.

hmmmm...this smells delicious.   She takes a first tentative sip..then looks up at him.

what is this?

never mind what it is

no really



it's the 12 year old.

pappy?

Yes.

You brought it here?

Yes.

But it is only for special occasions I thought?





And so it is.  He looked out over the streaming rain, her quiet smile in the dark, the curled ends of her hair, and remembered how special she truly was.

Stitching

God, unraveling from her was like undoing a solidly applied and tied off stitch.

It was the visceral cut of tissue, a plunge into skin and the splatter of blood....it was paper-cut raw and instantaneous. 

The alignment of flesh once properly enjoyed.

Leaving her was like turning away from a sunset...walking away from the beach.  Departing was emptying the vessel,  dropping your phone and seeing the cobweb of broken glass.  It wasn't just an emotion...

She had sewn herself in place.

She had kept herself quiet, going about her world...but slowly, stitch by stitch, she entwined them.

Her glances.  Lifting her eyes when he passed.

Full on stare when she was above him.

A blink in a goodbye. 

She threaded and needled and he opened and exposed.

He was a sampler...those old learning cloths that young girls would write the alphabet upon...their name...their town...their birthdate.

She wrote her story upon him...about them.

She held her threads and needle and pressed against him...he was covered in her...smothered in her.

He let her tattoo herself upon him and he embraced it...wanting the piece to grow bigger...their artwork invisible to the world, on full display to them.

The blue veins on her forearm...the blue veins slightly seen on her breasts.   They felt like they pulsated in his own...her blood and his. 

Together.  Stitched together.

It felt right...not like a sampler.  Rather like a heart transplanted into another...surgically inserted, perfectly connected, restoring the breath of another human being.

Alight

He glanced inwards as he passed the slightly opened door...she was still asleep, facing away from him and he watched her slow breathing raise the sheets ever so slightly.

The whirring of the fan created a nice white noise and she slept undisturbed.

He moved down the hallway and into the kitchen, the sun a gold dot through the trees...he plugged in the coffee maker and it bubbled awake, and the room smelled like the fresh brew...he banged the cast iron pan against the gas burner (shit, that'll wake her) and turned the knob to light the gas. 

He put four pieces of thick-cut bacon in the pan and it sizzled immediately.  It too added to the fragrance of the morning, knowing it was one of her favorites.

Leaving the confines of the kitchen quickly, he stepped out the back door to the potted plants...he forgot scissors and went back inside, flipping the bacon and returning to the flowering greens.  He cut a group of foot long lavender and went back inside in search of a vase.

The kitchen smelled like a diner...strong coffee and bacon.  He forgot to get her a tomato so once again he went outside to get one from their garden. 

A black butterfly alighted on the tomato plant for a brief second and as he drew near it fluttered briefly in front of him and then flew across the yard.

Stepping back inside, tomato firmly in his grip, he washed it and started slicing it.   He sprinkled a little salt on the slices and set them aside.

He stepped gingerly down the hallway and peeked his head into the bedroom doorway...he saw her legs moving and knew she was waking.

He walked back into the kitchen and took a heavy ceramic cup from the cabinet...he poured her a cup of the steaming coffee, put two bacon strips on a plate and added the tomato.

He balanced the meal fairly adroitly, and she was sitting up when he re-entered the room.

Sleep had made her hair disheveled...well, it wasn't helped by the tumultuous tussle they enjoyed prior to midnight...a sweaty collision of bodyparts and murmurings...but she had a similar smile.  It grew when she saw his handful of breakfast.

He handed her the cup first and she took a tentative sip, her eyes hovering over the hot liquid of exactly the same color....she glanced at the plate of bacon and her eyebrows arced slightly.

He pulled the dish behind his back, away from her...she frowned but he leaned in for a kiss and she smiled and gave him a full on memory of hours ago.

In the brief moment over breakfast she alighted upon him...the morning began again all over for him and it was even more beautiful than before.

Touch up

The dusks are starting to pinken...no airline contrails to leave a scratch of white across the evenings...the dark greens beneath the trees are starting to flicker with the yellow blinks of fireflies.

There is a radio somewhere playing...low piano music.  The floorboards set off a familiar groan while I walk from room to room...from the foyer near the front door.  I open it and look out onto the long lane, a slight uphill expanse from the road behind it.  I can remember you walked up at times...and in a current lighting of the sky I can clearly see you...engulfed in the soft yellowing day.  I can remember your walk...your amble...and the way you walked up the stairs onto the porch and into the doorway.

The expanse is darkening now in the twilight...there is no shape or outline of you approaching.  I shut the door...

Beyond the foyer is a small library...it is filled with books.  It is where you and I first started...it has a long wall for the books and a corner fireplace.  It has a loveseat with a lamp...the room smells of old paper and leather...of faint long-ago fires.  It is quite dark in the room, the way we preferred...our quietness with just the split of a wood crackle every now and again.

I move past the library...past a door that is locked...will remain locked forever.  Behind it nothing but destruction and unreconstructed repairs...I move past the door.

The kitchen looks to the west and it is an orange from the sunset in color...blood orange.  It is here where we sat with coffee, quietly enjoying waking to each other.  Tussled hair and pajama bottoms.
The sun rising on the opposite side of the house so the long beams from the front windows pierce in and lay in rectangles across the floor.

It's like you were the daylight itself, moving through the house...warming me.  Sometimes there were storms but so rarely.

And now you have returned outside...only to peer in occasionally.    I invite you in, wish you'd return.

I return to my work in the house, touching up tiny holes in the wall...thinking about your return...covering up the black and restoring the patch to something brand new. 

Dreams in times of Quarantine

It was a city...it was most likely New York City...a city we had both been to but never together...it was an elusive destination as it dominated my travel but occasionally yours...it was nighttime.

It was nighttime against a big expanse of windows...a full view from floor to ceiling...outside it was the blackened blue of a sky above an abundance of city lights...but the stars were quite visible.

We were in a room, full of white...white floor, white walls...the walls had texture, like wooden frames that created a geographic shape...but they likewise were colored white...it was a complete contrast to the outside world.

It was winter...that much I knew...at least in my mind.  December?  February?  Wasn't sure.

We moved about the room...topless...I know, it was a look.

You were pale, from the winter, a smooth statue...almost.  You were talking with me, greeting me, completely comfortable in your state...you wore jeans...that was all.

Mirroring you I wore jeans too...at least I think so...but likewise I had no shirt on. 

We talked, moving about the room, completely comfortable in our proximity, our hazardous clothing...our white skin in winter.

At one point we pressed up against the windows to the city...our chests cold against the glass...and I think there were flurries...against the stars...white spectacles moving, unmoving...against a dark dark sky.

I remember feeling the cold...but it was an exquisite one...the city beneath us, you beside.

We turned away from the window...you came to me, enveloping me in your arms, I remember slowly collapsing to the floor to be more comfortable, and you stayed with me, in an embrace, in a kiss...we moved from the glass to the floor as one, like two dancers suddenly falling...but we moved so slow...I could feel your weight upon me, a gentle warmth...

And you...you just barely showing what must have been the first signs of pregnancy...maybe three months...just a white portion that now pressed against me...

And then I woke up.

Quarantine

Sickening.

The sun is yellow light streaming through leaves newly sprouted, a Spring is upon this earth in the South and the sunlight is lasting longer, powerfully distilled between branches.  It diffuses into the yard, among shadows and green lawns. I should feel comforted, awake-like and warm.

Sickening.

The children ride bikes, comfortably apart, but energy in the street...colorful helmets strolling by, mastering the balancing act of talking over their shoulders and riding forward.  They pirouette and glide by, laughing and talking loudly and pretending it is almost Summer...

Sickening.

There is still music to be heard, music to be played.  There is still a chance to wave to a neighbor and a chance to be quiet and peaceful.

But I feel a great distance...a grave distance.

I feel constrained and like I'm breathing through a woolen mask.

I trudge from the stairs to the floors and back again...a wealth of bed-head and whiskers...watching time become simply the slide of shadows across the landscape...the neighbor's house...the light through the blinds...sometimes it is fast...sometimes it is slow.

Sickening...the aches...the absences...like senility I am partially forgetting...I'm losing the shape of you in my mind...losing what it felt like to touch.  I know it is out there...or inside of me...somewhere.

I am sickened at the thought of the great distance...between us.

My fingers flutter away from me, my hand outstretched...trying to find you like a candle in a forest...I will come looking...I will.

5:25pm

Amos Lee was playing...somewhere in another room he came out of a round gray speaker that filled the rest of the place with warm background noise...

Potatoes

What?

I love potatoes...carrots...celery and beans.  Her voice reminded him of a vinyl record song...something rare, like an old dialect...he loved the way it felt in his ears.

I have plenty of potatoes he said, over his shoulder.

In the kitchen he had made the broth, using bones and butter and onions and celery...some liquid beef gelatin to hasten the process but otherwise it was water and love...

The meat was out, coming to room temperature...outside it sounded like a storm but between the music and her words he couldn't tell...didn't care...inside was warm and infused with the smell of comfort.  Home.

She was working, staring at her computer like a mystery...a pencil tucked in an ear.  Glasses on to see better.  This image made him want to be perfect...make the perfect mood, make the perfect dinner...perfect meal.

He poured oil into the pan and turned up the heat...when it started rippling he added the roast...immediately hearing the alchemy of searing...darkening it and a slight smoke arose to join the mood in the room.  Already salted and peppered, the roast sizzled and she arched her head up a little...smells good.  She then stuck her nose back into the screen and resumed working.

He looked at the clock...5:25pm.

In cooking, like perhaps any other intimacy, it is the combination of ingredients, it is the perfect set of temperatures, it is the blending...the reduction...the salt gently added for taste...to him, it was her.  That when they touched, whether the swipe of a finger against hers, or the interlock of fingers, or even better the taste of her tongue, the reaction was very similar to the ingredients changing...he literally changed when combined with her...he reduced noise, pressure...he became calmer, more sedate.  But his blood boiled and yearning spread throughout him...and here, about 15 feet away from her it was like a slow preparation that he could already feel happening.

The white of the onions the color of her one skirt she would wear...like almost a dare...it was tantalizing short and pure on her...the orange of the carrots a scarf she once wore...the dark stew base was her eye color, shimmering from the heat...comfort food they called it.

He knew exactly why.

Labyrinth

I want to dream about you.

I want to feel the warmth of the wood of a pier in a summer afternoon on my feet, high noon in the sky and two shadows aligned perfectly but just barely there.  I want to hear the sound of a seagull and smell the sea.

I want to be on a porch in a rain, a thunderstorm, with you in a rocking chair beside me, watching the waters pour out the downspouts, the sky graying just before night so we can sip on a perfect cocktail or two...counting out loud between a lightning flash and the carom of thunder.

I want to be in a car in a valley in New Mexico...a long black slit of road slicing between towering rocks and earth the color of taupe...a convertible car perhaps where we cannot talk but we can turn the volume on the music as high as it will go.

I want to explore with you, in my dream, the dungeons and castles of your imagination.  I want to get lost in the woods, lost in a corn-maze, lost in a city street.

I want to see you in it, maybe not completely and perfectly clear...but knowing it is you...

I know it will be snippets, twists and turns, faintness and gauze-like...I know I may not remember. 

But as I close my eyes I want to find you, lighthouse to attract you...

At my most relaxed state in the labyrinths of my mind I want to call out to you...not a shout, just above a whisper, like calling up to your window...

I want to dream about you...

but mostly I want to dream about waking up...and find you there already.

Solitary

Quiet.

I think it is the awful quiet...the lack of noise.  Lack of presence.

An eclipse.

So vastly different when she enters the room, her quiet steal...shutting the door behind her and in closing it she becomes the world.  Every time.

An ocean of her, the salt of her...a voice, a laugh, an intake of air...a release. 

Even in quiet moments there is stirring, proximity is kinetic, this tension between them like the moments before a tornado...energy, heightening...

It is like bathing...cleansing...

She occupies...she abides.  I can possess her, and arrange.  We can envelop.  Clench.

And then those moments when the air stiffens...and she has to depart.

Mechanical.  Stonefaced.

Goodbyes.

And the door slams on my prisoned brain, my hands empty.

And my other world returns, its cloak a lonely, wet shroud.

objet d' art

The point of an evening comes when the sun has slid below the horizon and leaves a slight burn in the air...the room is mostly shadow save for two tea-cup candles, votives really, flickering small flames against the interior of the room....it is quiet, church-like...until there is a murmur, the slide of a mouth against skin and dropping across her horizon like the recently departed sun...he leaves a slight burn across her flesh and in this twilight there is a singular shape of an embrace...still clothed but only barely so...like the day slowly slipping into the night.

She built him, almost brick by brick, his hard uneven bones were held in her sweet hands...like a master mason she slathered him and stacked him neatly...the mortar perfectly hewn, the appearance of structure coming into place.  She had no blueprints, rather this being unprecedented...never before seen.  She had a vision, an eye...she placed layers upon layers...sometimes removing pieces, sometimes leaving parts unfinished...

She wielded him like an unblown piece of molten glass...an orange hot shape that she could sing her sweet oxygen into, warping a shape, spinning him into place,  delicately breathing him into something...

In the room her breathing intensified, a bit of urgency...the evening outside was blue and cold but inside it was skin on skin warm...clothes strewn in piles carelessly tossed aside...the alignment was like flint rock, sparking, combustible.

Her hands touched the clay of him...the plain grays of color that she could shape...christen...linger slightly against and craft...glaze him in her furnace, produce small objects of art.  Not for display, but to put on the shelves in her mind, these pieces of him that she wrought...some larger, others small...but all hers.

Her watercolor eyes watched him...she licked the tip of the paintbrush and dipped it into colors...she used small strokes and tiny movements...her pastels were pinkish and poignant...her landscape soft and inviting, the canvas the color of bedsheets,  the world outside growing darker and darker and her hands moved faster, her art becoming alive.

She was a tattoo on him...

An injection of ink, permanent and lasting.  Sometimes hidden, other times in view.  Unique, utterly and enviously unique.  Never guessed...always inspiring a question.  A curiosity.  What is it?  What does it mean?

The quiet in the room descended like a curtain, the colors becoming darker in the evening rolling outside...just hands now...finding the familiar...the braille of their clench, unspoken words and knowing meanings...a quiet vocabulary...hushed...

She the artist...

but also the muse. 

To take my plain colors and stale shapes and make me beautiful.

Us, even more.

Hurry

There are 115,200 heartbeats on a daily basis...86,400 seconds in a day...
with between 17,000-30,000 breaths depending on your level of activity...

Our day is divided by numbers...hard figures coded in a science...no deviations allowed, no semi colons or asterisks...no do-overs...once passed they glance off of us and spin away forever.

So each second apart is material...each heartbeat unfelt against an embrace just a solo act.

Therefore I hurry to seek you...hurry to find you...be with you...beside, nearby...share the same close air, improve the amount of breaths taken...

The unbelievable part is that when time is away from you it slows...ponderous...plodding...centimeters moving along a slow long road...too many numbers to contemplate...

But when in it with you...near...the speed is devastating...passing by like the increased heart rates and breathing rates...I still cannot slow any of it...

It is maddening...

But still...I hurry to find you.

Depths

Like scraping paint off an old house...revealing the colors beneath...the depths of the times when somebody wanted something new...painting over again and again...creating a new view.

I think of you like that paint-scraper...that simple tool...planing away at the harsh wood of me...revealing my character layer by layer as you simply sheer aside what white-wash I have used to cover me up...what colors I have chosen...what scar tissue I have built up...these layers upon layers...they keep me heavy.

Like an eroding tide sucking away at the beach, you spill back and cleanse me...

It's not the swipe away of a tear or something maudlin like that...this is puncture the bone type stuff.

You plumb my depths...

Your words insert themselves like an injection...

Your glances pierce me like a cut glass...walking barefoot in a hallway splintered with broken bottles.

Your pull of me into you is a bone-saw.

You cut me to the marrow...you wield such grace and potential damage.

I fear the grip you have on my heart.

It still has bruises from before.

You.

You dive into the depths of me with such ease, you whirl and swim within, you scrape away the parts of me worth losing...and find in me the cleanest...and the closest that anyone could be.

And stay there.

Odometers

What is the distance traveled to have someone walk back into your life?

Can you roll back the numbers to re-start exactly where you left off?  Or are those miles stretched and unable to return back to a starting point?

He asked her to go for a ride for a relatively short trip in a relatively old truck.  She sauntered down the steps of the house, her colt-like walk obvious as she strode towards the vehicle...it was not a fast walk nor a slow one...a bit of dust kicking up with her steps...it was a purposeful approach.

She opened her own door because that was what she did...she didn't need his hand to clench open the metal and strength to pull the door open...she had all that.  She climbed up into the cab and looked at him, her eyes a bit wide with an "okay now what" glance.  He remembered looking past her, back to the steps of the house...back to when the door yawned open and she emerged...he remembered thinking of the anticipation he always felt when he saw her outlined against the frame...like a cut-out shadow that he instantly recognized.  He knew her shape, he knew her gait.  He could pick her out of a crowd of thousands just by her walk.

And she was now sitting across from him in the bench seat...

He turned the ignition and drove down the road, winding past the barn and settling onto the two lane road beyond her property...the windows were down so it was a white noise in the truck, her hair blowing a bit wildly and she kept pulling it behind her ears.  The truck rattled when hitting certain parts of the road, causing a slight bump in the cab, and she shifted slightly against the rhythm.

Sitting anywhere near her was like adjoining near the sun...the part closest to her was flushed, warm...that side of his face almost in a sunburn...the side of him closest...it was just a rule like gravity...it was almost physics...he could detect her in the next room...but near him it was like when the sun comes out from behind a cloud...illuminating what was once in a shadow...what was once cooler...

He remembered a time when they were on a dock...it was off of the James River and it must have been Autumn or just the end of summer...the sun was lower...the water beneath their feet...the way the colors shimmered against the green dark waters...a thousand dimes...just twinkling...and the way the sun made you feel in the afternoon...their thighs were touching each other, both in shorts...and he knew then that they had some unnamed connection...

Back in the truck the air was filled with the outside noises...she had to shout a little for him to hear her...and he kept saying a word over and over again...knowing she wouldn't hear him...

He kept saying love...

he said things like "I love being near you"
"I love the way you look right now"

He must have said things like that a hundred times but in the din of the cab she would never hear.  It wasn't a whisper...it was a release...an escape...through his thicket of brain and the soft muscles of his heart...it started like a virus, slowly wrapping him in...and permeating him.

She was liquid in his mind, melting parts of him...oxygenated air...

He couldn't roll back any feelings anymore...she was present and now with him forever...now firmly intertwined...no uncoupling...no decoupling...there wasn't a him anymore...at least the prior him.

There was only forward...like the dusty road in front of them, in the old truck still churning along waiting for the sun to set.

In the case of Distance

The day is strewn along like a slow slog of motion...keeping moving...facing forward...the dull lifescape of a lone highway with no radio reception.  Static noise, maybe a snippet of some country western AM radio station...or a cell phone with no service.

A day empty of you...a colorless gray, a straightness of boredom, the only stimulation comes for the arc of the sun as it slides across the day and changes shadows and angles. 

I hear voices of others, extend hands in greetings, airbrush kisses to some and I want only to close my eyes to the din and the noise.  The familiar shapes are just mile-markers in a day, I pass them and continue...I am not heading towards you, an unhappy circumstance but I goddamn know where you are.

Or rather where you are not.

Because I can feel when you are near...like a full moon to tides.  I feel the gravity....the air changes slightly, more perfumed.  Cleaner...

Cleaner...

I feel cleaner when near you...cleanest when beside you.  The day washed away and the night portending, the twilight waiting to pounce upon us and the last light of the sky diminish about the moment my eyes close in a kiss.

But not tonight...tonight is a cloaked sky, enveloped with clouds, diminishing moons and a headwind.
A cold breeze...not cool...it is a wind devoid of scent...just a slight razor burn across the face...not refreshing or enchanting...

But the solace of the potential...the possibility...
of feeling the sweet slow breathing of you in a morning...the relaxed state of you...your eyes closed, a horizontal line of them in your sleep...the same angle as the line of the road that I travel...

And follow the the sun like the movement of your eyes from fully awake to ultimately asleep...

And I hurry so I might be able to kiss you awake.

No Rhyming

In an evening let me make you
feel something new, something different and unexplainable...time to a toddler.

let me touch you, breach you
 in an evening teach you.

In an evening let me make you
find a new color, a new song so that you can sing alone in a car when you decide to finally go home.

let me clutch you, clench you,
in an evening wrench you.

In a morning let me wake you
feel something familiar, something comforting and close...pillow near and blanket warm.

let me sooth you, seize you,
in a morning please you.

In a morning let me find you,
find your favorite motion, your perfect alignment...pillow muffled, sheets on the floor.

let me exhaust you, no cost to you,
in a morning accost you.

In a day let me find you
remembering a morning or an evening tide

Let me catch you, distract you
let me tattoo you.

In a day let me remind you
a bit of a grin with a guilt of sin

let me hold your hand like in a prayer
but let us find altogether rare.

A moment.  a memory. 

A noon, and a night.  a flood, a drip...a memory slipped.  An imprint...fulfillment.

What we bring together.
When together.

Those Times

He remembered glancing at his watch, thinking himself rude.  What he couldn't explain is that he wasn't in a hurry...rather he wanted to remember this moment, this hour and minute, like some string of lucky numbers...fortune cookie numbers...that found him with her at this exact moment.  In time.

He could remember the first time he saw her...the glance...askew.  He was driving down the street in a nearby neighborhood, slow and summery...a lazy hot afternoon...she had pulled a chair out onto her small front porch...incongruous with its presence, like her front lawn had suddenly transformed into a pool...anyways she was there with big dark sunglasses on...Jackie Onassis-sized...like a 50's starlet...casually relaxing in her front yard.  He looked at the dashboard and it said it was 12:11 in the afternoon.  Her street ended in a cul-de-sac so he made the slow looping turn to head back towards the entrance...she was now outside the passenger side window and he remembers her regarding him as he passed, her head slightly tracking his approach and the barely perceptible turn of her as he proceeded by...like the small barely tracking adjustment of a periscope...she regarded him.  In time.

There were neighborhood parties from time to time...the spill of children across lawns and the curbs, the neighbors moving freely from house to house...the driveways were where most of the cooking was happening, bar-bbq, steaks and hot dogs...men gathering like a perfect movie-set.  He was new, and had been a bit extravagant...while the festivities were supposed to start at five pm he was ready at 4....glancing out his window to see if the party had started yet.

Finally at 5:05pm he went out, a clutch of steaks still in butcher paper in his hands...some newspaper wrapped flowers and a good bottle of bourbon finishing his load.  It was still humid out but he wore jeans...first impressions and all.  He strode purposefully, past a myriad of driveways until he was near where he thought she might be.  Some man was in the driveway, starting up charcoal and talking with a clutch of other guys and he barely glanced at him.  He kept walking, thinking maybe he had misjudged his geography. 

She came out as he was looking down the street, wondering if he had wandered too far...he felt like she might have been staring but that was just mostly a hope that he had.  Instead she was taking something out to the man in the driveway...it looked like a lighter and he turned towards her.  She was walking back in the house, no sunglasses on...and she stopped.

Well hello she said, walking towards him.

hello he said, arms full of bourbon and flowers and steak.  He couldn't extend his hand so he sort of shrugged in greeting, feeling like an idiot.

Are you new here?  Not rude, but rather southern...hospitable.  She had a delicious low twang...not like Texas or Alabama...just what he imagined if somebody had to circle a place on a map and write Southern underneath it.

Uhm, yes...well at least to this neighborhood...but I've lived here a bit.  

She regarded him.  In time.  He felt it was a minute but mostly it was probably 9 seconds.

And flowers?

Well, he started....I wasn't sure if there was a host or hostess...you know, like a neighborhood designee...so...I sort of came prepared.

She nodded...I'll tell you what.  I'll take the flowers because I like those...why don't you come inside and you can use our fridge.  She reached out and took the clutch of flowers and turned, walking back towards her front door.  She turned back once, glancing back at him...he remembered the sun was low in the trees, and it was a gauzy light, and he could smell lighter fluid and the afternoon...but he also remembered the angle of her cheekbones...and the jean shorts she was wearing...her barefoot feet and her opal colored toes...her hair woven into a ponytail that sashayed as she walked...a tight white tee...she threw him a little smile and walked into her house, leaving the door open.

He followed.

Inside it was air-conditioned and clean...she had proceeded into the kitchen, already making noise with cupboards looking clearly for something.  He sort of paused, in the hallway...almost into the kitchen.   

She suddenly appeared, flowers in a glass crystal vase, already with water. 

It was 6:13 on the clock behind her.  Another hour to sunset.

I'm sorry I stole these from you, she nodded at the flowers, turning and putting them on her kitchen table.

Well I think they're rightfully yours...you're being quite the hostess.

Well, I appreciate it...it's always good to meet the new folks...she said folks with such a sound that he knew that it was an all encompassing term...man, woman...people. 

She gave her name, and he gave his.  He still had his hands full.

So what else have you got there?  

Well, I brought a couple of NY strips...some from that butcher in the Plains...thick cut and wet aged...and holding up the bottle I had some George T Stagg antique bourbon that I've been dying to try.   Just needed the right occasion.  The right time.

For the first time she really turned to him, facing him.  Her arms were across her chest...her nose pink with sunburn.  She had the makings of a model's face with just a hint of make up...she was confident but she downplayed herself...she was a mom and a neighbor.  But in that bit of seconds she was all woman.  At least that was what was blaring in his mind.

Finally she nodded.  She reached out and took the butcher wrapped steaks.  Let me put these in the fridge and let's agree to have the bourbon later.  She put the steaks away and then said I gotta go check on some things.  He looked at her absent portion in the kitchen...it was almost 6:20pm

And still almost an hour to sunset.

Over the course of the next few hours the sun set and the coals were lit...more people came out and soon they were just shadows and conversations...he talked to few of the men, mostly about work and sports...he played soccer with one of the teenage girls just passing the ball back and forth.  He remembered once looking up and she was on her porch...he couldn't see her clearly, the evening cloaking everybody like kids on a dance floor, hidden by lights, but he thought he could feel her.  Feel her watching.  In time.

He never knew what happened to the steaks, rather gorging himself on hamburgers and hotdogs...but as the kids started to dissipate, due to the later hour, he noticed the crowd thinning....the orange glow still emitting from the grills on driveways...but now it was little huddles of people.  Folks, as she might have called them.

It was 1030pm...the evening pretty much spent.  The music had been turned down...couples were returning to their homes, shouting goodbyes over their shoulders.  He felt like he did in the very beginning, very much apart.

I think it's time we opened up your bourbon.  He heard her voice, saw her white tee shirt...couldn't see her eyes or her opal colored toes.  He thought he could detect a lotion, like a lavender but he didn't know for sure. 

Sure...yeah I could have one before going.

Well good...so here you go.  She thrust a glass at him, two fingers of a pour in a heavy crystal glass.  Neat.  I figured somebody with that type of bottle probably drank it without any ice...she swirled her own glass, clunky with ice.  I'm sorry, I have to mix mine with ice.

He nodded...no worries...and thank you for the drink.  He held his glass out to her...she paused, kind of looked around and touched hers barely to his.  cheers, she said.

He heard her name being called and she turned slightly towards it.  I have to go now, she said. 

I know....he downed the liquor in a single gulp, the gorgeous nectar burning its way down his throat, the way the sun had burnt through the afternoon, the way her voice burnt the air between them...he finished it and handed her the glass, again thanking her and turned back towards his own beckoning home.

He looked at his watch.  It was 1040pm. 

Unadorned

The landscape was white, the sheets and pillows unadorned and simple in their whiteness...the slopes were the slight hills of their bodies beneath...slight movement...the slow awakening in a morning.

They awoke.

She was almost child-like in appearance, no make up, hair askew...her eyes were wide and her laugh was amazingly familiar....he heard it fade as she went into the bathroom to catch herself in the mirror...he heard her make some noise about her hair and fussing a little...he looked in and she was sweeping it up over her head and cascading it into a high ponytail.

Landscapes look different in seasons...a farmer's furrowed field, dark and rich in spring is clearly exceedingly different under the weight of a snowstorm.

 In the evening a moon in summer cuts through the dark and finds shadows...where a moon over snow creates a white-out effect. 

A child's chalk colored sidewalk reverts to plain limestone when scrubbed free from a storm.

Graffiti artists take their art and imprint the infrastructure...decorating overpasses and subway trains...

Thunder clouds gray out the blues of the horizon, sheets of rain dull and blur the colors, the shapes beneath...

A sunset is usually the very last amazing kaleidoscope of colors before blackness smears everything away.

Certain things are beautiful adorned...rarer are the things that are beautiful unadorned.

She fell into both categories.

A naturalness that came easy...a landscape worth mapping...a new continent worth the dangers of exploring....setting out to sea in a general direction, unknowing the tides but staying fixed on one star.

A sun.

Worth waking to.

Worth waking with.

Blinding, incandescent.  Burning warm and bright.

And then descending...

worth drifting with...worth drifting off with...on a vast unknown sea, unadorned by stars...

Just to rise and begin again.

Once again.

Car Rides

There were two quite similar but also quite different emotions when crossing the James River on the ferry...it just depended on whether or not he was coming to see her or leaving her behind.

The arrival sentiment was anticipation...a pent up amount of eager, almost teenage-like compulsion...a fondness of past encounters that only grew greater with time, and an almost complete obliteration of focus or fondness for anything other than her.

He didn't like the departure emotion so he tucked that away in his mind like a worn piece of luggage.

Crossing in the ferry had a seasonal component...in the winter the river was brown and black in certain areas, the wind sliding across the deck and the waves a little choppier...he was content to stay in his car, engine running, heat on, listening to music.

But in the summer, when the river was green beneath a sky of high clouds and light winds he would always stay outside, arms on the rails of the ferry, watching the other side come closer and closer.  The scent of seas and waters mixed with salt carried across the deck, a few sea gulls daring to come near and the churn of the powerful engines beneath him added to the senses and marked his arrival in this place.  Her place...her home.

These flat farm lands...these long rows of furrowed fields that surrounded the river as it twisted and turned its way up to Richmond from the Atlantic.  These deep fields of history, where colonies and plantations chronicled the past...and the people were conditioned to be southern, hospitable, genteel...strong willed and comfortable in their position...families tightly intertwined and while hers had been polite to him he knew it was a work in progress every time he drove up to the house.

Which was why usually he sauntered up the steps, knocked on the heavy old door and waited on the porch.  He rarely entered...not because he wasn't invited but usually because they were going to soon depart and take a drive down one of the old highways. 

He'd certainly been invited the very first time he made the trek, and he had brought some wine and bourbon and some flowers for her mother...there were about 25 people in the crowded house, mostly her siblings and their children and some long-time family friends...he was a bit over-dressed but first impressions you know...

He had a chance to sit next to her briefly, a quick appetizer session at the dining room table, and their fingers interlocked underneath it, out of view...her hand was warm and he knew she had lotion on it because when he let go and brought it up near his plate he could smell it.  Her.

But usually he allowed her to answer the door and pull it shut behind her, leading him back out to the car.

His old 1972 Impala convertible...a land boat, once blue but painted red for some random reason long ago...it had bench seats in the front and back...a rarity these days...it allowed her to slide all the way against him, his left hand on the wheel, his right arm around her.  The only downside was the radio was original, and he had added after-market speakers in the footwells...it could get loud but tinny.  But they didn't care.

Rear wheel drive and he would floor it on the dirt driveway, leaving a trail of disapproving dust in its wake...he imagined her family watching her disappear down the road in a veil of light brown clouds as the vehicle churned up the ground as they hurtled down the lane.

He forgot a lot of the songs but he remembered the way he felt...in the warm summer afternoons they would put down the top and her hair billowed all around them...oftentimes she would wrap it into a ponytail, wiping away some of the bits of her bangs that fell...the car rambling along Highway 31 back towards the ferry that would return him and then turn left or right so they could watch the river.

They talked beneath the trees, the radio slight in the background...occasionally laying down in the front seat to get closer, in the shade with just a few souls around them...their world was layered beneath tree limbs and cicadas...the hum of a few passing ferries and the salt from the sea.  It was in her pink cheeks, glazed by the sun, her hair a little curly from the ride in the convertible.  She smelled clean, like linen, freshly laundered and dried in the sun.

The drive back to her mother's house was always in the twilight, driving straight into the sun as highway 616 turned into 615, and they always tried to guess if they could beat the sun slipping past the horizon as they pulled in.

A quick slide over to his side of the seat, a warm kiss on his mouth and then she would slide back and open the passenger side door.  She never looked back in these departures...he wondered why. 

The car was never turned off; he pulled the lever into reverse and slowly turned away from the house, no billowing smoke or dust.  Rather a terrifically somber drive in his mind.

On the ferry he was usually one of the last of the scarce cars to join...the mood deflated.  It was just so different returning from her...he felt scooped out...haggard.  Windblown and disjointed.  Mostly it was just an absence...like a moon-less night.  No direction to gaze at, nothing worth regarding.

He was exactly the same as when he had crossed over the river, but now he was just a shell.

He reached the other side, disembarked and began the slow dark ride home.  At a stop sign he raised the convertible's top, the last scent of salt air disappearing as he latched the top closed.

It was full dark now and he didn't even know what day it was.

Oregon Coastal Rainforest

The rain was steady...a comforting soothing sound like far-off music, drowning out perfect silence but not loud enough to disturb the peace.

In her mother's house she listened as the rain descended on the roof, the color outside her window a black that could only be seen if far from city lights. 

And city sounds.  Just weeks ago he had called from the static noise of New York...another business trip, another city in a rain.  The conversation was short...he didn't want to disturb her while back at home...but his voice was strained. 

The distance was beginning to descend...causing cracks and fissures.  She remembered the sirens in the background, the pulse of a city pumping through the phone, horns and the sounds of strangers as he walked the street.  She could barely hear him and said so...it frustrated him and they hung up the phone with him in his noise and her in the quiet.

She remembered a field trip she had taken, one time in middle school...young enough to be excited about something new...and the bus had lumbered its way into the mountains surrounding the Shenandoah...as they ascended on switch-back roads the clouds came alongside the road and when the bus finally started the visibility was cut to feet...and they piled out into small groups in the parking lot, surrounded by the trees and unable to see much of anything.  She remembered she had her camera, and had drifted off to the side away from the group...wanting to capture a photo of the forest, free without a bunch of other kids in view. 

It had started to rain, and the noise of rain in the forest was new for her...the water on the leaves, not all hitting the ground, but rather hitting the branches and the trees...it was the most peaceful sound she had ever heard and while she tried to take a photograph it was the noise in her ears that was captured.

She heard a teacher yelling and she came out towards the buses...she was late in returning and all the others were already onboard...she took a seat in the back, hearing the rain on the tin roof of the bus.

It sounded nothing like the rain in the forest.


As she now sat on the bed in her mother's house the rain sounded like that bus ride rain...she pulled off her socks and smirked...he had purchased them for her before Christmas.  A small and innocuous gesture, the least romantic type of gift but he had always commented whenever she pulled hers off...usually before peeling off her clothes in a ritual movement that sometimes included him.  And his.

But her mother's house was far away, and so was he.  She laid back on the bed, the rain still steady...wondering if he was in the air or on the ground. 

She remembered the last time he was beside her.

She remembered the last time he was inside her.

Both were in a room that was not in her mother's house...rather a neutral place.  Not a home, not an island, but a place where the worlds could intersect.

She remembered the breadth of the bed, the cool collection of the sheets and the proximity...the somewhat interesting dichotomy of the sweat of the brows and the cooler air outside.  It had been extraordinarily quiet...almost too quiet.

Except the breathing.  The inhalation and exhalation...the sensation of a body recovering from exertion...a delightful and delicious sensation but it was very quiet otherwise.

She remembered he had flipped open his phone and pushed a few buttons...a beautiful sound of rain emitted...a very long ago noise that she had burrowed into her brain and it burst open in a memory that was so different from her bus-ride rain.

She had asked him what he was playing on the phone, what app, what website, what music source.

When he replied it was the exact same place that she had remembered...and this time she had pulled the covers up and burrowed into him.

She thought about that, laying on the bed in her mother's home, the rain sounds a bus-ride rain again.