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.