Evening-ish

 Looks like rain...

She was away from him, further up the porch while he was on the swing, looking at the western part of the world...she said it as matter of factly as if she was giving the time.

That's alright, he responded...we have plenty to drink.

She turned to him, her glass now empty and smiled, holding it up to him.   He sighed, set his feet and laid his glass carefully next to him. He walked over to her and took her glass...he started to turn but she held him up with her hand and pulled him towards her...

just another one of these...the last parts of the sentence ending with her mouth on his...while still in a kiss she murmured thank you.  He turned again and went inside.

He always enjoyed this somewhat servitude role he could play...wasn't always like that and she sometimes chafed with independence...but watching her on the porch, waiting for him...waiting for him to return to her...he enjoyed this tension.  He wondered how long she would wait before becoming too impatient.  He decided he didn't want to know and quickly put some ice into her glass and poured her a couple of fingers of bourbon.  It was probably too early to be drinking this stuff he imagined...but if it was fixing to storm then there was no better glass to have in your hand.

He returned to her, handed her the glass...she took it, took a sip.  Above the rim of the glass her eyes were smiling. It was in these moments that he wish he could bottle and put on a shelf...he knew she was relaxing...he knew she was shoveling coal somewhere into a furnace that only she could control the temperature inside her body...maybe shoveling was too aggressive...maybe more like dropping bath bombs into a heated tub...she was grooving...letting the drink warm her from outside and their proximity warm from within.  It was like when the roller coaster ride was just about to crest the top...

He wanted to stay in this moment forever...

A slight rumble of thunder in the distance reminded them and he returned back to the swing, using his feet he moved slightly back and forth.  She stayed alongside one of the columns, leaning slightly against it.  She was gazing out well past the yard.  

You're too far he said...she turned slightly, that smile again and ambled over towards him.  She sat down on the swing and eased back into it...I was looking for the first fireflies.

Oh yeah, he said, slightly sitting up to gaze over the railing. He thought maybe it was still too light out but the darkening clouds were probably about to ruin everything not under the porch.

He reached out to her, her proximity not too intimate but very close...his hand on the back of her neck...he played with her hair, sipping bourbon.  She leaned over into him, bringing her closer...he could feel her warmth but mostly he could feel her relaxed...she wasn't on her phone, wasn't on her computer although it was open and in the other room.  She made him want to serve her...he wanted to tell her but felt showing was better...

He looked over the yard...I think the rain is gonna miss us...gonna head north.

That's okay...I just wanted a storm to go to sleep to.

Well I can try to make you sleepy.

She laughed...well I'm not quite ready there.

I suppose not...

Well...you know the shower head in the master has a rain effect...

(SILENCE)

He remembered his earlier wondering about her patience and her delay was now causing him to wait.

She raised her glass, drinking the remaining liquid as the ice clinked.  

You want another one to ponder my question?

No, she said, I don't need that to decide.  I want one with you.  I'll meet you there.

She got up, handed him her glass...she walked away...and damn if it didn't start to rain...

Yeah, I hear it she called from inside...I'm still going to meet you in our own rain.

He listened to the rain for a few minutes, wondering how long he could wait until she really got impatient.

He decided he didn't want to find out.

Eskimo Words for Snow

Scintillating is how she is...like indescribable...but walking out amongst humans and recognizable and what-not she appeared completely and utterly fine...wearing her normal palette of colors and blending in....she had a habit of saying "you know what I mean" and for somebody who's brain I tried to figure out a long time ago I admit I had some trouble keeping up at times.

In the complicated complexity and puzzle of us it was hard to find discontent...mostly the times were exquisite...monumental...a visit to the Louvre.  An Eiffel Tower sunset.  A side street in France surrounded by strangers who glanced at obvious attraction on display.  Yearning.

What do we call it?  

Friction, protected words and stances...hard to explain...like Eskimo words for snow...so many nuances and layers.

Back to discontent...trouble...storms on the horizon.  Rare.  Fucking rare.  Primarily because she avoided conflict like dark alleys and sandstorms.  

But every once in awhile he wandered and stepped on a landmine...a sacred area she deemed untouchable.

Incompatible.

At least to them.  They could peacefully coexist in this world and nobody would blink.  Throw a flag.  Allow a slight entry point from the oxygen they required from others and it was a bit out of bounds.

It was frustrating...this greek chorus that could chatter about them but candidly never did...but if I invited then I probably violated our protocol.

It was the bad pull from the Jenga game...the spill of a beer pong cup.  

I could be carefully crafting a world but behind her, behind the props and the curtains was her world.  A sacred place. And if I pulled back a piece of that cloth between these places it was exposure.

A kryptonite.

Untouchable to me...

I know she had one foot in one world and one in another...and if I wanted both of them in mine I think I risked the gravity and physics that brought attraction in the first place.

I suppose I wanted a lot.  Given her shine.

A Return of Sorts

 It wasn't their city.

He remembered an argument over a phone when he was soaking in a tub in the Plaza...a long ago debate about actually getting together...her voice on the phone tin-like and thin...he stayed in the tub as the water grew cold.  He hated arguing with her.

She was unlocked in the low country...she was sea breezes and open windows in a Spring morning when the dew is drying and the sun is just barely a warmth.

He was a brick alley.  But he loved sunsets.

She was the first cool feeling of a wave over your feet in the ocean...the sand warm, the shells pin-pricking their way under the soft heel and the foamy wash a bit of a chilling surprise...that then withdrew only to do it again seconds later.  She would likely argue that one should be aware that the ocean was sometimes cold and waves literally happened in waves...a recurring tug between gravity, the moon and tides.

She was almost always right.

But God did he want New York to be theirs...cab rides colliding down darkened streets, stolen kisses in darkened doorways, a vibe, an energy...when the rest of the world (the southern world, her world) was putting on pajamas and socks New York was putting on lipstick and stepping out.  The music in certain bars, the dollars slipped into doorman's hands, the restaurants with 10pm reservations...he so wanted that.  He wanted to be in a suit, a tie...and by night's end he wanted his tie in her purse and her lipstick on him.

But it never happened.

She wanted porches and swings, cobbler and tea.  Thunderstorms you could see coming.  The crickets and the peeping frogs.  The quiet after a sunset. The smell of rain.  It's not like he relished the sirens and the horns, the pungent trash bins and neon...it was the pulse that he wanted.  Her pulse to match it.  And she didn't.

The quiet of a New York city morning...gray sunlight.  He wanted to wake with her in a bed of black and whites.  Coffee in proper porcelain.  She was content in a morning with a rooster and a cup from a camping collection.  

He pondered his dilemma...the eventuality as he felt it.  He didn't disagree as much as want to add her as an ingredient into his favorite.

He loved the sound of his footsteps in the dark in a night...she loved the way the grass felt on her bare feet.

He was going back to the city...and as he prepared he took only his best clothing...his favorite dress shirts, his cologne, his polished shoes and his collar stays.  He touched the material, felt the heft.

He thought of her love of flowers.  

He remembered a time when they were drinking bourbon in an evening...fireflies were out as it must have been early summer...her legs were folded under her.  The orange of the twilight had dissipated...they were in a bit of shadows...he heard the ice molting in her glass...the air was still and it was quiet...like in an empty church.  It kind of struck him...he remembered a slight kiss and a murmur. He remembered a moon.

He finished packing for his trip to New York. He thought about how it wasn't their city.  

He zipped the zippers close.  

Tobacco Barns

 

So they found themselves in a summer...an unusually warm one in the Surry County seat and the weathermen and women had been predicting storms throughout the week.  But as they walked along the roadside of 626, holding bottled waters condensating from the humidity there wasn't a cloud in sight.

Ahead, in an acreage there was a red shaped barn...an old tobacco one, flimsy, but still standing.  

Let's go explore he said...and they pivoted their path and slowly started the angle towards the barn.

They approached it, looming red and contrasting against the blue background...it was slightly raised, like it was being readied for transport vs dying on this grassy beaten-down turn.  It looked like it was going on a trip...against its own wishes.

They pushed open the creaking door and went in, the humidity cloying, like a fishbowl...slivers of daylight strewn down in sleeves...but it smelled of old wood...and perhaps old tobacco if you closed your eyes.

The colors in the barn were collecting...yellows from the tannins of the sun, dark shadows in the corners of 100 years of wood, the beaten down hay was gone from a color to a blend of whites and darks...the red paint from outside was just barely perceptible inside.  

She was wearing a black shirt and jeans and the dust was in orbit around her, pushed from their feet, in colloidal suspension hovering in the sleeves of light shining through the slats in the roof.

it was like stepping back into 1860...or sometime around then...with the hurrying of people and bright-leaf tobacco...stringing it up into the rafters, opening the windows to dry out the leaves...

In his mind he felt the weather...the outside.  The accumulating humidity and the pouncing of storms.  Here in the old barn the mood changed...the sleeves of light dissipated...shadows gathered from the corners and now joined hands to fill the room.

He had never smoked...but he loved the images, the demure way women did.  The way they held the cigarette, the way their mouth slightly opened to put it gently between their lips, the slight purse as they inhaled...maybe the way they pushed them to the side as they gently blew the smoke away...and the warmth of their mouth if he happened to kiss them during or after smoking...

What are you thinking about? She was staring at him, backlit against the barn...not an accusatory tone but more of a "hey, pay attention" one.

I was imagining you smoking.

Me?

Yeah.

Okay...she knelt down to tie her shoelace as it had unraveled...why would you do that?

Can't you smell it?  Can't you smell the old tobacco?

She stood up and turned around...maybe?  

He moved closer to her...took her arm and guided her closer to the wall.  Some of the tobacco poles where they hung the leaves were leaning against it...smell one of those poles.

She moved closer and put her nose against the wood.  Mmmmm...that's delicious.

He joined her, enjoying the musk of wood and old tobacco and summer.

I think I'd very much enjoy watching you smoke, he said.

She pulled back a little...really?  Why?

He grabbed her hand and pulled her with him, moving slightly towards the door...a breeze had picked up and inside the barn it was suddenly stale and hot...he could feel the light wind coming through the door.

It's hard to explain...you just make certain things...better.  Sexier.

She let out her low laugh.  You're weird.

He nodded...they let their hands touch briefly and then connect and held them as they walked back to his car...

Let's go buy some cigarettes...I know this gas station.

Worship

 I awaken to the sultry sound of far-off bells, beckoning the faithful to come and bend a knee, join in a silence and consider somebody worthy...

I lift my eyes up hoping to see you, wanting the stained-glass to be burnt a dark brown and when the light pours in I imagine a stare...I murmur your name like a prayer, the words alighting from my lips and ascending to your ear...a heaven's distance away.  I clench my hands together, almost painfully, as I want to rip them apart and clutch you...but you are far so I hold onto myself in the hopes of saving them for you some day.

A basket is passed, brimming with people's money...I am tempted to reach in and snatch as much as I can, and maybe buy a ticket for a plane or a ride on a bus and come to you...instead I merely pass it on to the people beside me.  We stand and we chant and we kneel some more and we sit...I think unholy thoughts and immediately ask for forgiveness only to start it over again...so I close my eyes and all I can see is your face.

I read from the books and I believe...I believe that in them I get the same feeling from you...the peace, the courage...the love.  

I sing, not well, but joyfully...I want you to hear the words we lift up...I change and insert your name in certain portions and I feel even better in my bad singing.

We conclude...we rise...we stream out, gently yielding to others as they depart...I take my time, enjoying the growing silence...it reminds me of you...this peaceful empty beautiful building...not physically...but of how you make me feel...how you descend upon me and let me falter and fail...a save...a temptation.

The wicked thoughts I conjure up...the confessions I make...the penance of our separation.

I finally depart...moving from a tiny place of worship out into a world where everything I see reminds me of you.

Tastes

Departing in the dead-ass earliest of mornings he could still taste her...weaving through the travelers and the luggage and the security gates and over-head announcements...even past the Starbucks line and its scent of coffee and pastries floating gently in the terminal...he could still taste exactly how she tasted...the slight granular and poke of salt on her lips, the cold of the iced-down tequila with the contrast of her slightly warmer tongue...he walked past a gate jammed with travelers and found his a few hundred feet later.

In the antiseptic confines of seats and airline brands he put in his headphones...he had finally joined Spotify and found it amusingly underwhelming...but he was tired.  They had barely slept.

Hours earlier...she had asked..."do you want a lick?"

She had raised an eyebrow, a skill he had never possessed...she was holding the salt rimmed cup in one hand and a lemon in the other...she was still dressed which was disappointing but that was only a matter of time.

Sure, he responded...but where?

She set the cup and the lemon on the counter and started unbuttoning her shirt...she unbuttoned a few buttons but then reached behind her to loosen her bra.  Both items of clothing were loosely clinging to her, like defying gravity and beneath them...well.

She reached over to the lemon and started just below her neck, squeezing it slightly to leave a residue and she pulled it downward to where her unbuttoned shirt hung barely.  She smiled at him, a dare.  Then she reached over to the pile of salt and pinched a portion...she applied it on top of the lemon's glaze...some stuck and others tumbled down her, some going into the void, others falling off of her to the floor.

She patted her hands together to free the last bits of salt and then she took the top of her shirt and pulled it so it fell over her shoulders...just barely...

I'll let you decide, she said.

He kissed her first.  On her lips, and her response was to move closer.  He kissed the corner of them and let gravity slide him down her, along her chin and onto her upper neck...he avoided the obvious and went to her just below the ear...and eventually found the top of the salt and started there...he could feel the movement of her breathing flare.

In the airport somebody was talking about who got to board first, who needed extra time...who needed to check luggage if at a certain point the cabins were full.

He inhaled, hoping to detect a whiff of lemon, a tartness of salt infused with it.  He thought he could.

He got up and boarded with the others, with their morning coffee and orange juice tastes in their mouth while his remained filled with her.