Candy from Summer

Do you remember, it must have been in the summer when the heat layered itself across us and we were intertwined like twizzlers, our shapes melding and aligning and soothingly sweet, our shoulders touching, our legs pretzeled together, our heads on the same pillow and our eyes so comfortably close…our faces flushed with pinks and the sweat still sweet in our hair.  Our mouths slightly parted, the breaths still coming quickly, a little hitch with a slight swallow, our heartbeat visible against the skin.  We lay against the sheets, the light of the afternoon kaleidoscoping in through the trees and the limbs and leaves, the sun dead even with the windows, and it was quiet…quiet like an abandoned church in the middle of the night…save for the slightly slowing breaths…and our mouths that had been so carnivorous,

so colliding, 

so active and alive 

were now so quiet…but still tingling, like we had been elbowed in the lips.  A gentle elbow though.  

But mostly, what I remember when I find myself in slow moments when I am in a phone-booth in my mind

is the slow, 

peeling 

of our skin as you gently removed yourself from me for a moment,

like a fruit-roll up being pulled away from its wrapping,

leaving the glorious candy to be separated and

slowly folded into my mouth.

The Neptune of You

Triton is the largest of Neptune’s 13 moons. It is unusual because it is the only large moon in our solar system that orbits in the opposite direction of its planet's rotation -- a retrograde orbit. Like our own moon, Triton is locked in synchronous rotation with Neptune -- one side faces the planet at all times.

It was a snow globe of an evening, the white dancing bits alighting in the wind, caught in the dull yellow of the porch lights, irregular shapes against the blackened tree line and twisting their way down to softly settle like children cuddled to sleep.

It was cold, a very cold that was like an absence.  Like a day of sun had been kidnapped and buried in a hole, leaving no trace of any previous indication of warmth. 

He had his boots on, although pebble-like bits of snow had found their way over the tops, warming against him and dampening his feet in icy slices.  He had trudged to the truck, clumsily using his arm to remove the snow from the hood and the top of the cab, again snow sliding sneakily into his cuffs, now bringing cold to his wrists and his forearms.  Not quite as annoying as his rapidly freezing feet but a damn sight not too far off.

He had turned on the engine, made sure the tailpipe was clear, and he could see red check engine lights on his dashboard.  The truck was dying, slowly, but was at least warning him.  He was either too poor or too lazy to get some things fixed.  It was how he was.  The truck didn’t matter much to him, it held way too many attic-scented memories of slammed doors or tears seen shimmering in the dim cast shine of a half-broken dome light.   The truck was their child from a broken home…he had just happened to keep it.  And it was dying on him.

From his driveway he saw no other cars, no other headlights.  It looked like the street had been attempted to be plowed.  It looked a little flatter, maybe not as deep.  He couldn’t really tell though.

He got in, pulling the driver’s door shut and it cascaded a dusting of snow into the interior.  He could still see his breath, against the red warning lights on the dashboard, and when he turned on the headlights the snow globe exploded as thousands of bits reflected back at him.

This is stupid, he thought.

Instinctively he glanced in the rearview mirror as he pulled the gear shift into reverse, watching the red taillights reflected against the falling snow.  There was nobody behind him and he edged back, threw the shift into drive and pulled slowly out.  He kept the accelerator on a slow steady pulse, could feel the balding tires grabbing as best they could and he seemingly crawled onto the main highway.

It had been plowed, awhile ago, but he could make out the lumps on either side of the highway so he could stay on the pavement.  

The headlights carved a keystone white against the gray road, and the flakes pilloried his truck like they were trying to get inside.  

The heater was starting to work, and he wasn’t as cold in his wrists and feet.  He had worked to get the radio on, and he found a jazz station that faded in and out.  It was not appropriate music but once he found it he left it alone.  Again, it was how he was.

Ahead a lone snow plow was coming in his direction, yellow warning lights on top of the cab, its bulk visible as it straddled the highway.  A slew of road snow was being thrown to the side and he tapped his brake a little bit to make sure he passed slowly as the plow converged on him.  The back end of the truck was a little loose and he felt a slight slide to the right but he quickly steered in that direction and he got straight again as the plow went by.

The road returned to being dark again in front of him.  

The trip wasn’t very far, really a few miles yet in the dark and in the snow and the cold it made for a much longer ordeal.

In a way it was like the orbit of a cold moon of a distant planet.  He traveled the seemingly infinite distance in a gravitational pull.  Sometimes nearer, sometimes farther, but never touching.  Never colliding.  Although his moon was pockmarked with numerous collisions, numerous impacts, touches, glances, blows.    

He pulled onto the street where he knew that she lived.  The snow had taken a break.  So had the snow plows apparently because the street was barely discernible…the ground flat from the front of the houses in a smooth plane to the other side of the street.  He slowed, the wheels crunching, turning slightly against the soft white, his high beams revealing a flat planet of snow.  

He stopped the truck a house or two shy of hers…the engine idling, the sky opening up again with the flakes and as he glanced towards her place he saw a light turn on upstairs.  He smiled a tired smile, a relieved smile as he realized she was inside, she was warm and she was safe. 

 He didn’t continue to drive until he was in front of her house.  Rather, he carefully backed up, found the driveway of another house and reversed his trek through his own tire prints.  

The return trip seemed shorter.  Like a retrograde orbit.

2014

Tonight, amongst all the wishes and toasts, I come back to a simple truth. In this new year I simply want the old you. 

Scene from a Diner

She held the salt shaker deftly in her right hand, tilting it into her left palm until a small 

dusting of salt covered it…she then pinched her fingers on her right hand into the pile, and deftly sprinkled it 

across the food…quickly rubbing her fingers together to brush off every crystal.  He watched her 

fingers manipulate the seasoning, remembering the same way she had deftly reached behind her, as

she faced away from him and released her bra clasp, the fingers expertly releasing the hooks and 

eyes and catching the bra as it fell away from her.  He had remembered this, with the light splintering

in from the diner’s windows, as she seasoned her food in front of him and in his mind he could still 

taste the salt of her.

Tomorrow

Like the first orange iris of an Eastern sun and its corona collision with the blue cold in a morning...like pinks and blues in ribbons to start the day.  Like a cool breeze across mesquite, barren and brittle in a December wind. Like a rivulet of I-35 or maybe I-95 or maybe a dark charcoal line that may lead to you. Like the part of you in your almost-winter eyes that may turn and suddenly alight upon me like the flash of an arrival's headlights. Like the red cold trace of an aircraft speeding away from somebody, or maybe to somebody. Like the flutter of a brief tip of some fingers, cold and red in an afternoon that suddenly steal yours and find them warm. Like a kiss with coffee, like a kiss with wine, like the cold view of the neighbor's lights twinkling while the house is still sleeping. Like a very brief moment, when suddenly things could be, or might be or may be. Possibilities. Like unopened gifts. That may remain so. Or might be ripped apart. The pieces of the last bits of fire, the last parts of the warmth, the last bright and tiny, shiny portions that looked like the sun that very first thing in the morning. That is what I would give you if that is what I could give you.  

Banter

I smelled somebody today and it reminded me of you.

A pause.

What?

You know.  I was walking and I stopped and somebody walked by and they smelled like you and it reminded me.

I'm a little confused on if this is a compliment or an indictment on my hygiene.

He heard her breath come out fast, almost as a tiny laugh.

It was, I guess, a compliment.  I'm near people daily...and they don't remind me of you.

Just the ones that smell.

Just the ones that smell nice.  

I don't think I get close enough...at least to females...to determine if they remind me of you.  He said it as if he was next to her, because sometimes words are physical and best said in proximity.

Well what would that smell like?

He paused again.  I am not sure if I remember.

Well, she said, this person reminded me of you.

And is that reassuring?  or is it disturbing?

Hmmm.  I guess it was just a memory...it was like a comfort.  

A comfort?  Like a blanket?

Well...I don't know about that...it just was a brief scent.

They say the most powerful sense is that of smell.

Is that what they say?

It's what they say.

So why can't you remember if you know how I smell?

Again, he paused.  Because...

Because why?

Because your impact was beyond just one sense.  

One?

Yes.   

It was again the quiet.  Her brain was processing...his was looking up words in a dictionary.  So he started to tell her....

You can never be duplicated.  Nobody could walk by me and cause me to think 'Oh, she reminds me of her, she smells like her, from the back she looks like her...' because there really isn't any way somebody could fit that...or at least come close to that.  At least...it hasn't happened.

More dead air.

Somehow I like that.

Well.  I sometimes wish I could be reminded...because then I could find it when perhaps you're not around.

Reminders aren't too bad.

Reminders suck.  They're alarm clocks.  They awaken memories.  They put a bandage back on a newly opened scab.  

Well when you put it that way.

So tell me...when you smelled the guy and I'm assuming it's a guy...when you smelled him, and he got into your mind and it stirred things up...what did you want to do?

What did I want to do? 

Yeah.

I didn't really want to do anything...it just, I guess as you mentioned, it stirred up things.  

But you didn't want to follow him and grab him.

Grab him?  No.  I just stayed there, but I definitely didn't want to go after him.

So you lingered.

I lingered.

That's too bad.

Why?

I don't know.  Because if scent is the strongest reminding sensation, then I would wonder if the next act is to devour.  

Devour?

Yeah, consume.  Like a pie.

A pie?

A pie.

How did we go from cologne to cooking?

We went from lust to sex.

We did?

Well not actually.  But we went from a disturbance in our mind to a taste to a consumption.  

I don't think we did.

Well otherwise this whole conversation is a lie.

And why is that?

Because you admitted a scent had an impact...that went in through your nose, perhaps was a taste on your tongue but then registered in your brain as pleasing.

I never said pleasing.

You didn't have to.  

I just said it reminded me of you.

Was it a "hey, I could fuck you in this moment" or was it a "hey I could tolerate you on a 3 hour bus ride?"

Wow. 

I know.  Vulgar.  But taste and consumption are primal.  And I guess that's just what I was wondering.

A bit more dead air.

A guy walked by me.  He smelled of a cologne that reminded me of you.  And you've turned this into some sort of Truth or Dare.

He smiled at her conclusion.

When you tell somebody they smell nice it is a benign thing...but when you tell them that somewhere, somehow down the line that another person reminds them of you because of a scent it is a different animal.

It is?

It is.  

And why again?

Because it is now a muscle memory.  Unclaimed.  Unopened and unrealized until something triggers it.

So how does that devolve into the sex thing?

Because it is an attraction.

An attraction?

Yes.  A one time thing then it's that benign thing.  A memory?  A remembrance?  It is an attraction.  An attention.  And that, my friend, is the first awkward step towards intimacy.

It was quiet again...intimate, ironically.  Both just breathing, the connection via miles and ether was crystalline despite the distance.

I like the way you smell...was all she offered.  It doesn't mean anything else.

I hear you...but perhaps...in the future, if so fortunate, let's put all the senses together and see what happens.

Together?

Yeah.  Sight.  Touch.  Scent.  And maybe I will kiss you and taste will join and we'll see what happens.  

What do you expect to happen?

I expect the unexpected.  But I'm willing to see.

Willing to see.  

Yeah.  

Okay.  By the way.  What is that cologne?

Come find me.  I will show you.

Scarlet

Bleed into me...bleed into my thoughts, blend into my mind.  Bleed into my eyes, disguised as tears, bleed into my day, disguised as daylight.  Bleed into my evening, a cloak around the sun, bleed into darkness as a cloud scuttles across a star.

Bleed into me the hot pulse of blood, the living you...a reminder.  Bleed into me your fragrance, bleed into me your distance.

Bleed into me the spiraling memory, when you and I were about to kiss, when you and I were so close I could see the pulse in your neck, the dilation in your eyes...our breath mingling, our lips just centimeters apart and our blood boiling inside of us...hot of us, hot for us...when distance was just a pinprick away.

Now just a papercut, a nuisance...perhaps not even drawing blood, perhaps devoid of the heated fluid that swam strangely, like a fever...a pox, a hotflash...the pooling of warmth in cheeks, in a flush, and in the parts of us we don't talk about in public.

When you and I were so tantalizingly close, when there was a roar in our ears, when our eyes were slowly closing preemptively and in those fading moments I could almost hear your heartbeat, almost hear its echo.

I could sense the scarlet in you, see the scarlet in you. 

In these winter skies, or almost-winter skies, in the grays and in the whites, in the plumes of fogs and exhaust pipes, there is such an absence of the reds of you...the scarlets of you, blood-signs, life-lines.  Blood lines.  Such a contrast it could be, almost as a moon against a sky.  But a moon is bloodless, lifeless...it is a cold veneer, despite its beauty.

You have traded with that moon, and remain cold in my sky, frozen in my mind...a light not from you but from some other sun.  Not a blood line, not a lifeline.  A reminder.  A pale bone, a pale shine, that still remains beautiful...but empty...drained.

And I search it, I explore it, daring it in the night sky to reveal just a pulse, reveal just a hint.  Something to show me that it is alive, something to indicate the travel of blood from a vein to a heart, something to reveal a tiny smoldering. 

Something, in the grays and in the whites, that it is not quite dead, that it is not quite gone.  Something, perhaps just any thing, that appears and it might be no bigger than a pinprick.

But in that tear-shaped drop I feel the pulse of you, albeit distant, but alive, and beckoning, and in its rhythm I count the sequence of time that pulls me back into the place when our eyelashes were touching, our lips were almost and in between us our blood slowly boiled just beneath the surface.