Sundays in the Fall

 I remember eyes that perfectly matched the color of her coffee...the color of the James River after a heavy rain...such dark quietness...her blink like the shutter flash of a camera and you were now a portrait in her mind...hung tidily on some wall where she might let you venture.

On a day of worship that is what he did...he fell to his knees and held her above him, his kiss along her thighs, the top above her knees, he felt her hands on his shoulders, her hands in his hair...murmuring her name as he nuzzled her skin...worshipping her on this Sunday.

The sun was late and low these days, the hours of daylight growing smaller, melting like the way sugar melts in water, making the day parts that much sweeter.  She moved around on the porch the same way a leaf would fall adrift from its limb, to and fro, and finally alighting upon him, butterfly soft.  Lips as warm as noon in an Indian Summer, each time rekindling him.  Reminding him.  She spoke in a quiet throat, him straining a little to hear, to catch each careful word...nodding in response.  Pulling her into him, like the envelopment of flannel...she covered him, cloaked him.  He was the barren ground and she was the maple leaves, the beautiful yellow, orange and reds that fell gently...her bareness even more beautiful than when fully clothed, stark and perfect against the dying light of the short afternoon.

She arrived each time as if daybreak...time only started once she walked in the door.  And in her departure, a void like space where no gravity existed and time was stuck blinking and unmoving.  As if winter was an extra frozen month, and slowly warmed but only enough to melt snow into dark gray piles.  A day in noir, a black and white photo of nothing.  That was time away from her.

But not yet...

For now, she was close...close enough to feel like a furnace.  But warming from the inside rather than from the outside...because she was still inside of him, as well as the outside.  On this day of worship he lingered and slowly let fingers become intertwined, praying for the hours to slow down and for the daylight to still burn...just as she did beside him.

Full Tilt Downhill

He needed her.

Needed to return to her, needed her proximity, her closeness...her alignment against him, this calming salve that spread slowly across him and gently drained into his mind, the precursor to sleep, a precursor to dreams...

The days were bricks, laid one by one...whether placing them gently in an otherwise un-extraordinary way,  a simple placement and mundane way placing them slowly on top of each other in some imagined pattern...or smashing them to pieces in a day fraught with excess and stress...fucking unleashing some primitive portion of his brain...the days were bricks and each day he awoke to an unvarnished stack of them. By the thousands.

He was the bricklayer...the calloused hands, the dirty parts, rough-hewed like an old pair of gloves...his heart was calloused and course...he was grit and soured and plain in his days...unremarkable, unregarded, a brick in a wall filled with look-alike bricks...something you could literally see every day and still forget about it.

She.

She was the flower in the sidewalk...she was the harvest moon...she was the butterfly in winter.  The ember that arose from a sparkling fire and blurred itself into the night...she was seldom, she was rare.  And he felt like he had seen her once, maybe briefly captured her for a bright morning second...only to find his calloused hands empty...bereft.  Ugly without even the notion of her alighting on him for just a second and announce her beauty as a cleansing of him...as a brief acknowledgment of him and his dirty soot.

He carried the glance upon him from her like a lover's locket...a chain across his chest, settling above his heart.  She radiated upon him like a shadow, a tattoo...but invisible...not many could see her with him but he clenched that view in his calloused hands.  He caressed it like a baby bird that shivered in his grip.

She haunted him.  She showed up idly in his thoughts like a random cloud in an otherwise brilliant sky.  She invaded him, overpowering any desire to smother her image and her eyes so deep inside of him...a ghost hell-bent on appearing, a bit of water slowly working its way through bricks and finding a way to collapse them.  She worked on him in a way that was quiet...careful.

The way winds carve rocks in the west...the way tides create sandbars and beaches...a slow pace that can impact even the most calloused parts of the earth...the most calloused parts of him...a subtle presence of slight pressure that creates the friction that molds underneath...

so when he was in his dark and ugly place, littered with bricks and pieces of mortar and unfinished walls...he wished for her...murmured words and her name and rubbed his calloused hands to feel a warmth...nothing compared to the friction of her but a poor-man's substitute...

And in his mind...in his thoughts...he was running.  Racing actually...hurtling himself down a hill, everything akimbo, a reckless pace, a relentless drive...full tilt...hurrying himself, flinging himself...to find her...to join her...to align with and be with her.  

Merely be with her.  Quiet.  Quietly.

But still with her.

He placed another brick in place and he remembered and he slightly smiled and turned to the pile of a thousand bricks and he knew he might be able to soon see her...at least perhaps when asleep.

songs from a car

Try that station...no, the one up from that one...

Her voice was slight in the sound of the winds and the music but it was a song to him, her southern tones lilting their way into his ear, spilling against him...certain words, certain phrases...she owned...nobody else could claim them. She was leaning forward in the car seat, turning knobs and working the dashboard...it was a rental and there were some things unfamiliar.

I think you need to push that left arrow he offered...and she just turned and looked at him, that flat gaze when she knew what she was doing...letting him know his suggestions were unhelpful.

Outside of them was the world, tilting to the west....a stretch of highway alongside the Pacific as a great blue ribbon as far as you could see...the sun shining billions of dimes on the surface.  It was warm, a day that felt like there was no need for a thermostat...the warmth of walking into a barn in late spring, a dry heat that didn't move at all.

He had first met her, or come to know her, from outside...a day unlike this day when he was barreling down the road and saw her on a tractor, an older man beside her (her father?)...and returning hours later she was still out there, doing whatever she was doing in this field, great motes of dust surrounding her...the older man gone but she was still driving and working against a barely-there sunset.  He thought about stopping for some random reason but decided it felt early....too early.  Besides, while she looked stunning from the road he couldn't quite tell.  He drove on.

And a few days later he drove past and saw the same thing.

A few more days and the same.

So he purchased a cooler and he filled it with ice and water bottles...on a whim he bought some beef jerky and some hot fries snacks and threw them into a bag.  He drove slowly past he farm but she wasn't there.  He sat there at the edge of the road, hearing the ice melting in the cooler and wondering what was next...

he couldn't find an FM station so he tried AM until he stumbled upon some weird jazz station...he was listening to it briefly when he heard a bit of a rumbling...he glanced in his rear view and saw a tractor on the road.  

She was driving slowly...up and coming behind him.

He heard the ice moving again against the cooler in the front seat.  He put on his flashers.

She slowly came up behind him and started to go around...when she got even with him from her seat she stopped.

Are you okay? she offered.

He looked up at her in the seat...got a pretty decent view.  She was sweaty, reflecting off of her forehead but she had amazing cheekbones and searing dark eyes.  

Uhm, yeah...I'm good.  I was actually waiting for you he said.

She looked ahead at the road in front and then turned to look behind her.  You've been waiting for me?

He looked down at his front seat.  He picked up a bottle of water from the cooler.  Actually, yeah.  Can I give this to you?

He held up the bottle, dripping wet from melting ice and condensation...she kind of released in a way and then said Toss it to me.

So he did and she caught it...first rubbing it across her forehead and then opening it up and downing it in one fell swoop.

So you said you were..."waiting" for me?  She looked ahead again to make sure no traffic was coming, her tractor in the one lane next to his...his car partially off to the other side of the road.

Yeah...he started...I've seen you working the field.  Do you know how you see something from afar...like across a way...and you find it intriguing?  Like discoverable?

She was looking at him flat...nothing to give.  Her hair was darkened by sweat, her hand holding the empty bottle.  I don't really know.

He shrugged a little.  I saw you out there, with someone...it was hot, it was muggy...I was driving by in my convertible with the air conditioning on and I was still hot...and I saw you out there in the middle of this heat and...and I guess I just wanted to give you something to bring you relief.

He patted the cooler, and just looked at her...looking at him.  He then burrowed into the bag and brought up a bag of Hot Fries.

Is this like some sort of bribe? she said

No...no....think of this as....like some sort of icebreaker.

Now in the convertible by the Pacific, she was twirling the knobs to find a suitable song.  From that day long ago she had stayed so aloof and so alone but she had allowed a piece of her to break free.  Her father, the man in the field so long ago had passed away...and she was far away from the farm.  But she had retained that same outer layer...that tough bit of facade...and he had tried to whittle away at it...tried to chip away.  

The ice had been broken, but just barely so.  She still looked with cautious eyes.  She still was quiet more likely than not.   But he looked past her to the Pacific, in its blue depth brilliance, and instead of recognizing that beauty he felt more drawn to the one beside him. Her complicated quietness.  Her depths.

She found a song and they drove on.

Echoes

I wake up and through squinted eyes and a bourbon hangover I see a yellowish gauze coming from the window...it is a reminder...I am alive...in a world...and somewhere in this vastness so are you.

A clock ticks silent seconds and I try to remember what time feels like when I am with you...a racing entity, speeding moments and feelings, unable to catch my breath, hurtling down stairs and inclines, I pray I could cement these moments, carve them on a tree, cutting bark to permanently imprint these frames of my memory...and I fail.  I fail to do anything but to catch a few exquisite moments that flashbulb in my mind before vanishing into tiny dots...

I want you to be a bruise so at least I can touch it, tap it and feel the feeling again...it wouldn't be pain, this bruise of you, but remembrance...a raw, rare sense on my skin...it might hurt to push but it would connect my skin to my brain and back to my heart and the colors would remind me of the marks you have made upon me.

Cotton candy memories spooled out of confectionary sugars, a taste of a stolen kiss, a glance, a stare...compiling these sweeteners on a stick to walk around the fairgrounds of my life.  Sticky, sweet, a quick sucking of my fingers to remind me of the remnants of a place...a time.

I sit in traffic, a thousand taillights...time is a straight line in a lane ahead...seemingly endless...I realize just how fleeting our time is and how there is not stopping...no stop and go...but rather a fluid drift like a river after a rain...a gentle nudging against the earth, a flow that is unstoppable, unrestrained...a calming of alighting upon the earth, the topography and easily floating along top, no obstacles, a trust we are heading to a place together...so very different than when sitting in my car going nowhere.

I hear a song and want to share it...I see a flower and want to grow it...water it and care for it until there is a time when it can be plucked from its darkened earth and in its most beautiful state be pressed into your hand...for you to enjoy, even if only briefly.

We are a flower at its fullest.  We are in a jar on a table emitting colors, vibrant and provocative.  We can be seen from across the room.  And thus we stay...we never wilt or wallow.  Rather, we are this snippet.  This beauty surrounded by the ordinary...

I wake up, with squinted eyes and blink against the gauze of yellow light coming in...and in my mind I hear the echoes of the colors and the flavors and the noises of you.

Like Water

He had never brought her water. 

There had never been a voice from another room, calling out her request...he had never spent a minute on a task so simple, so common...and in all the little things he felt he had done for her for some reason he had never crossed this off the list.

Because he had never been with her at that moment...at least that was his belief.  When the world was a darkening sphere with a moon just under the window shade...when the heavy blankets might have been tugged downwards towards the foot of the bed, the throw pillows collected on the floor. 

A quiet house, perhaps a slight creak when he walked.  The peace of an evening.

He had never invaded this time, never watched as she perhaps disassembled herself from the day, layers pulled over her head, pulled down from her waist...leaving her ready to tuck into sheets and pull the heavier blankets up towards her.

He had seen her plenty of times when in public, had seen her laugh, lean in for a kiss perhaps upon saying hello or goodbye, the delicate scent of her just grazing him.  She hadn't ever needed anything...composed and smiling without a single care in the world.

Care...that was what he wanted...well, rather, what he wanted to provide.  And in bringing somebody water, that glass that will sit by the bedside, providing comfort and usually one of the last moments before closing her eyes...well, that is where he wanted to be.

When she was at her most vulnerable, her most relaxed...her most casual.

He wanted to be there, watching her accept the glass from his hand, maybe take a swallow, maybe smile a thanks...place it beside her bedside and knife her legs under the sheets and start to rest...start to slumber.  

And he would be there, standing as she said goodnight...meaning she was here and she was comfortable with him being there as well...and expecting him to join her...and expecting him to wake up beside her.

That is where he wanted to be...

And In

 And in the carefully crafted questions, in the pillow spill whispers, there was always a single place that might be even better than the one that they were in.

And in the descriptions in their sentences it was the palest of blue skies swooning with scars from high white clouds, cat scratches across the surface above, wavering and bending in high tropical winds.  And in his recollection she had mentioned the flour-like feel of the sand, that indented slowly in their footprints.

And in their world at this place there was never another soul...another human. Rather an infinite absence of any distractions, allowing a full and unfettered focus...

And in the winds there was the slight scent of hibiscus, filagree...a fragrance both familiar yet almost forgotten...until it invaded your senses and pulled you back into a time that you had overlooked for some reason and now you were completely transformed in history.

And in the still wet bathing suits flung to the floor, kicked off in the haste to collide with each other, the coolness of the tile elicited shivers until he could turn the knob of the shower and push it to warm...the waters dousing them as they congregated each other into their arms, their legs a bit intertwined, the quick reach for soap and the slippery suds now glazing them.

And in the drowning sounds of the shower they cleansed...purging the sand and the salt.

Simultaneous Combustion

She called his name and he whispered hers, the sound of her voice almost finished when he started his own.

The tiny black mark left when a lit match touches skin...that split second of pain in the extinguishing of flame...the ending and a beginning, almost simultaneously played out.

There are never two falling stars...but sometimes there are two rainbows.  Seven colored versions...rare.

The outstretched hands of a trapeze artist, reaching out in mid-air...grasping, letting loose and falling only to find the warm grip of another...a togetherness above the net, safely held, and then they were together.

The split seconds.

The blow out of a birthday candle and the immediate wish being granted.

It is the running, the sprinting, the heads-down acceleration and the sweating and the focus and then the tiny subtle stumble, the out of control windmilling of the arms and the gravity effect pulling you in and then instead of a hard crash landing you are caught in some arms and you remember and you let yourself fall and instead of falling you saunter, you slowly glide, you slippery slope into a slumber, you align and you are conjoined and you are still...except for a heart racing from the sprint, still sweaty.

You exhale and you inhale him...and he inhales you.

In an empty church quiet...red letters tell the time on a clock but the day is still.  

We stick.

We stick to each other, names in ears, darkened hair clinging to foreheads...salt of mouths, a warmth that is connected like skin...

Never have the pillows felt like this when we land...never has the ceiling been so blurred.

Never has the outside been so far away.

Never has our proximity been this close, in synch and for some insane reason the beat of your heart merely mirrors that of mine. 

Pauses in the Early Times

 

Looking back, he could only think about geometry.  Physics...timing.

What had led him to intersect her...or perhaps her arc merely melted into his...an apex, an arrival.  A collision.  

Either way, he was surprised when he heard her voice in a place most unexpected...a SoHo bar, late at night, in an evening surprisingly quiet in its weekday wear.  

But there are very few voices that ring the chimes in his head.

Is that really you? she said.  He tilted his head, wondering if the words were even intended for him to hear.  He didn't hear a reply and fully turned.

And she was there.  In a place they had never been together...but now were.  Outside a sudden ambulance siren broke the evening and he had to delay his response, so they stood there...this collision unfolding in silence and she didn't blink once.  Rather she just stared.

Then, it got quiet and yet he was gently reminded how much he enjoyed just the quietness of her and how he could simply stay and stand with her.  Or stare.  Didn't really matter, their were arcs intersecting, complicated algorithms that had landed her here.  

What are you doing here he asked and immediately was regretful and rapidly added I mean, it's rather amazing you are here....but...really.  What are you doing here?

She smiled...she already had a drink in her hand and she was a bit in shadows in the dim lit bar...he could see her face, but not much more.  He could see her eyes though.

I just stumbled upon you.

She cocked her head as was her wont...and regarded him.  

Well, he offered...there is no stumbling.

Yet she replied.

So she joined him and her glass was empty and then it was replenished and they spoke about a million things, nothing special, just catching up...just this arc of a story that suddenly intersected.  They were huddled, hunched together...almost like their bodies made the shape of a heart if you were to see them at the bar.

It wasn't much longer than lights started alighting and the bar became an overhead distraction.  He paid and asked her where she was heading.

South.

They walked a bit, avoiding the uneven bricks in deep Soho streets and the scattered landscape caused them to sometimes bump into each other, a slight move into her,  a lean into him...a random intersection of bodies and sinew and muscles aligning...for just the briefest of moments.  In his mind he accounted for each little movement, his hand in the gentle part of her back, and when the tiny collision occurred it was like flint and rock.  

They ambled down the darkened street, coming into the circle of a streetlight the returning to a shadow.  As they walked and she sometimes got closer he could smell her perfume.

As they passed on particular dark brick alcove he felt her briefly stumble, and he pushed her alongside her back and his other arm came across her front...it was almost a hug but in his mind it was a catch...and she walked backwards a few steps until the bricks stopped her and he was brought closer into her...and in that moment she leaned forward with a kiss...a first quick kiss with cool lips and then he felt her warmth and she intersected and collided with him and her hands pulled him towards her and the geometry of them allowed for the perfect of angles and in the dark, if you could see their bodies intertwined and the shape of them in that alcove it almost like the perfectly drawn curves of a heart.

Soothe

 

She is like awaking to a rain storm...not thundering but rather the brushing of rain against a window, painting the house in the gray colors of a drizzle.  A rhythmic sense, the way a squall builds...the pressure changes, the bit of stillness in the air...then the gradual pulse...the building of ingredients...wind, clouds, and the heavy bit of moisture that fills in the clouds and begs for release.

She is like a puffy-eyed awakening...an over-sleep, when the color in the room is brighter than it should be, the day has gotten away from you, but there is no remorse of the extra hours or minutes that you lingered in bed...scant dreams, barely remembered, just the warmth of covers and unruly hair...an awakening and you are hungry.

She is the butterfly amongst the flowers, the rainbow after rain.

The greenlight just as you approach an intersection.

The salted caramel on the tongue, the bit of chocolate on the angel-food cake.

The IV drip.

She spackles my life, covering my holes, smoothing me in uneven patches.

She sits in an easy-chair in my mind, subtly rocking, subtly moving and stays empty-church quiet until a bit of me gets a splinter and she extracts it and kisses the wound and I barely notice...until she needs to do it again and then it becomes a pattern and she begins to become more than a want...she becomes a need and I awaken to a thought of her...and then I think of her as my day begins and I am soothed.