There is no Last Ferry

He always tried to time his departures when you could just barely make out the Church Tower at Jamestown...a sight he had seen in his visits but still was a bit haunting....300 year old stones assembled for people to worship.  He knew something about worship...but for him it was more in the form of a person and not a building.

He was on the 2nd deck observation deck, the ferry trailing a bit of a muddy wake as the recent storms had churned the river and the late afternoon-almost evening air had a slight chill like it was starting to sense Autumn.  He felt the beginning of some ache like he always did at this point...going past Glass House, starting to move into the deeper water.  

He began to miss her the moment she turned.  While she was still in his view he started to sense the brief splintering of her presence and like a spill he started to feel an emptiness starting to spread.

It tended to peak when he could see the Church tower, which is why he always departed in a bit of the twilight.  And it just felt like a reminder...of things that can endure.  Things that can stand through bits of time.  Long times.

It sometimes made him feel better, sometimes it didn't.  When she was with him his eyes scoured her, recording memories of her face, her look.  He wanted to pull her inside of him, to capture her in her perfect state and preserve it.  He tried to remember that she made the length of time irrelevant, that regardless of how long she was there it was never long enough.  

And he couldn't quite remember how she looked because each time he saw her after an absence she was exactly prettier than before...and perhaps that was the absence and his memory colliding but he always noticed something new...there was always something fresh.  

Which made the departures even more maddening.  

Soon the faint outline of the Church Tower faded against the blackening backdrop of trees and the rest of Virginia.  It felt like he had just closed his eyes.

He furiously tried to remember exactly what she looked like...how she looked like to him.

What Constitutes Beauty

It wasn't a question, rather it was a declarative.

Beauty is generally seen in presence...I invoke it in absence.  I love the beautiful wake you leave behind in a departure...a leaving.  Being present, being in front of me, the slight rise of your breathing and the scent of a lotion and then...then nothing.  But not nothing.  An impression.  A fingerprint.  But left somewhere upon me indelibly.

The velcro-like pull as you walk away.

It's like the need for a drink and finding only empty bottles.

It is a draw.  It is a kiss at prom.  It is a heart rate increase.  It is comfort.

There is a reason we kiss with our eyes closed...to feel the part of another that is best imagined.  Best left to the colors of the brain, and letting our mouths decide direction.  Our arms to figure out connection.

Beauty is felt.  Not seen.

You are quite beautiful...to the eye, and to the scene and to the world.

But you are what is quite frankly the substance of beauty when you are not seen, except perhaps in the bright tug of a memory.

Circles

At times she was a warm iron, her heat emanating from deep within.

But at times he felt she had sadness, balloons within her that he could sometimes prick with a comment, and it would slowly empty and she would be rid of it.  For a moment.

Like now, on the porch as an evening devolved into a muddy mixture of storm clouds and darkness.  Ugly colors in a humid evening.

I just wanted you to know that it is in these...these little brief moments that I feel like I am inside of you...inside of your mind and I'm simply merely trying to calm it.

He announced it as she sat behind him...he on the porch stairs with a drink in his hand.  His comment had been with his bourbon outstretched in front of him, gesturing that the horizon was collapsed into a tiny pocket of this small house in the southern county.

Her voice, usually in reactions to his comments, was quiet.

I know.  I know I'm not able to share whatever you call it...you and your writer words.  

He turned to her, a shape in the evening...legs together and tapering up to her hair and her face.  It was the worst lighting...in a bright space her eyes were such toffee colors against an angled face.  It was something a bit mesmerizing while expressive.  Here, in the shadows of a night about to commence he couldn't read her.

I don't need you to share.  

I think you do.  I think you need to hear it.

He nodded slightly, knowing she couldn't see it.  But he knew that she could strip him like a sapling, carving him in layers and keeping bits of him to collect and preserve.  He couldn't do that to her...she was like an iron that required him to warm her...to warm her from the inside and perhaps maybe warm her to the point where she exposed herself a little bit.

I don't necessarily need to hear it.  I guess I just need to feel it.  And unfortunately I probably need to see it to feel it.  And that requires being here.  He said this as he mounted the steps and walked briefly in front of her.  She had a slight habit of murmuring when she wanted to say something but kept it closed inside of her.  So he started again:

But here's the thing.  I am slowly realizing that I don't need to be here either.  So long as I know you're here...so long as I know you're somewhere...some place.  Just knowing that you're in an evening and so am I...I'm learning that even that small common piece is enough for me.

Meaning what? she said.

Meaning...I don't know...it's like a presence.  A prayer.  It's the sense that you are there...that you and I are maybe thinking the same thing despite distance.  I don't know.  It's a bit crazy.  But I sense you.  I sense your presence.  I feel the weight of you.  Like your walk, your driving in a car to work...I feel it.  I know you're there.  

Why the prayer comment?

Because you pray for something you want.  Sometimes you pray for something you need...I don't know. Perhaps I need you.  I definitely want you.  It, at times, is hard to tell which.

Quiet in an evening, the sawing noise of crickets and the insects of a marsh country signaling the start of their music in the dark.

I just want you to know that I find that sometimes you are sad.  And I just want to erase it.  Maybe not perfectly like it's gone forever.  But for the moment I want you to not be thinking about that...and maybe realize that I find the perfect architecture in you...that all is so perfectly fine so long as you are somewhere in the day.  And maybe in those long hours I might get a chance to be with you and just share the rest of it with you for a tiny brief moment.

How brief a moment?

As brief as a kiss.  

Fingernail Moons

When the night is like an attic, with the heat just stale and barren and cloying and surrounding...like a gray red warmth in an evening that is just an annoyance.

A thumbnail moon slides a sly smile across a dusk.  It is reminiscent...does it want to be full, does it want to be pretty?  Does it stand out in the sky?

You sure did.  But not just a mere moon...you were unfortunately the sun.  The center.  You could bring an eclipse but you were always there in sweet-heat perfection.

You painted skies in pastels and evenings in oranges.  You tanned and you darkened.  You boiled inside of me, a source of energy, a bit of everything I woke to and slept to.

You were a blinding, tear-inducing stare that I longed for, went blind searching for as I gazed and gazed and gazed.  So much so that when I closed my eyes I could still see you.

I could feel you, on my forehead, on my cheeks...if left alone the tiny bubbles of blood coming to a boil.

You were a time clock of my day, a perspective.  I could tell it was morning and I could tell when it was evening.  I could tell when you were sad, or just somber.  It was full effect.  It was there even if in shade.

You were the light, pretty such pretty light in a corner of my world where you were the single largest part of the day.  You might have been somebody's lantern, somebody's companion but you were my afternoon heat.  My high noon.

In these evenings, when the long ago sun illuminates a fingernail moon, I think of the absence.  Where did the rest of it go?

It's a smoking hole in a dark that is barely lit by the skim of light.  It looks like a wry smile...of a time when you were such a center in a time when we were we.

And now it just reminds me of where the rest of you went.

High & Dry

Most days it just felt oppressive...the weight of an afternoon waiting to finally tip over and collapse in a spew of rain and thunder.

It was mid-summer, the perfectly balanced part of the season where the halfway point felt like the rest might last twice as long.

Each day felt the same...the exact and mirrored day as the one before...and most likely the same as tomorrow.

She was gone and her absence felt like a hole in his day.  There was no sweet relief of a brewing and darkening storm bringing some reckoning to an afternoon of high heat and humidity.  There was no stir of breeze.  It was still...a frozen time of oppressing warmth that clung to him like a shrunken sweater.  It moved with him, stayed with him.

She had done neither.

She had taken her rough-river colored eyes and slid sideways away.

She had disassembled her presence in her own quiet way...not loudly or disturbing but like a blink.

The sun doesn't seem to move, but he's sure it does.  Slight subtle movement across a sky.

She had emerged in his sky like one of the early stars, while the light is waning but brilliantly fighting for his attention, his gaze.  Only to disappear in the morning when the dawn blotted out the tiny light. Extinguished came to his mind.

It was hot again today...it was the same as yesterday.

Reunion

She woke up in a familiar room in a familiar bed…the sun just a bit of orange gauze through the blinds on the window.  Her stirrings were slow as she extended her full length beneath the sheets, stretching and finding the cool parts at the bottom of the bed.  She heard the slight squeal of the wooden stairs as somebody descended…her mom, perhaps…or a brother or sister.  She couldn’t tell but it was one of them as they were all here…a place that she supposed was home but from a long time ago.  It felt different now…probably because she felt differently too…it was a warm comfort, as much as the weight of the linens upon her now…she reached slightly to the desk beside her where a piece of paper was creased and folded.  It was of sturdy stock, almost like parchment and she held it now, her finger rubbing alongside it, feeling the rather rough edge.  From below she heard the sounds of a morning being constructed, the bright bang of a pan and the scooting of chairs…the first scent of coffee invaded slowly and she sat slightly up in the bed, pulling the pillows together behind her.  His tee shirt was loose around her, and she pulled the cotton up and could barely make out a bit of his scent.  It smelled of an evening, some smoke from the bonfire and she inhaled slightly.  The sun was yellowing, the room changing slight colors and the noises downstairs were growing louder, the clear drones of conversations, a cup being set on a table and it sounded like some of the kids were now joining the fray as a few peals of laughter were heard.  She unfolded the paper, again wondering why he had bothered to type it…his answer had been “because you cannot read my writing.”  She smiled briefly at that, her hair falling a little in her face and she brushed it away.

I dreamed of you last night…I dreamt of you.

It’s a rare and distant chance to see you in my sleep, to be sweetly and gently aware of you and let everything blur behind it.

It is always hateful waking…the pull of you away and the sudden realization of a day starting without you in it…I rage at the sun, the early sky, holding onto the silk memories of your face as I try to fall back asleep, willing myself to dream of you, to see you.  To be here now with you.

It is a sweet reunion.

 

Below she heard somebody ascending the stairs and then a knock on the door.  She folded the paper and set it beside her. 

She got up, answering the door with a slight smile and began her day.

 

First Drink of an Evening

The first drink of an evening was often how he liked to imagine the progression of her against his mind...the slight anticipation, the comforting expectation...the first sweet moments that dulled the day, erased sharp edges and warmed him from the very first kiss of the glass against his lips. 

After a day of chores, the mundane...people, slightly annoying decisions...the taste of bureaucracy, and the lack of unmoving moments in a chair in an office...that first tumble of ice into crystal was compelling...a clarion call to hurry the mind and shift to a different place. 

And while that implies an addiction...well, I guess it just may be. 

But in a good way...a welcoming way, familiar.  Holding hands, a remembrance.  Quiet moments spent together with barely a noise.  These were the arc of thoughts as the arc of an arm brought a drink to his mouth and he savored the first bright tastes of the drink.

The drink was a toast to her...unspoken, silent but completely elaborative and deserving.  He simply toasted the way she made him feel...and that feeling was quietly and subtly the same way the first drink of an evening made him feel.

And the irony is that the second drink, as much as the first one made him feel that agonizingly glorious familiar way she made him feel...started to remind him that she wasn't there...and that the dulling soothing powers of the alcohol were patching up pieces of him that she had plucked from him and kept.  With the crushing weight of her distance slowly numbed by the distance between his drink and the next one.

Slowly, like watching the way an evening turns from its blue tones to grayish ones...and then you turn and it's black outside.  That first drink now a memory...but she remains blazing and on fire in front of him despite his very best efforts to let her slip coolly into the evening instead of burning that part of him that remained untouched by his best efforts to not let her linger in his mind.