Chasing

When looking back he couldn't exactly remember why she had started running...just that she did for some reason.

Not that it was unimportant...rather he just knew that there were times that he needed to follow after her and there were times that he didn't.

He remembered how she startled when he had arrived, like a surprise.  But without a smile.  And looked around quickly even though he was the only one around her...it was in the side room off the main portion of the church.  He though he might find her there...an odd intuition but one that he followed and walked up the long driveway until the white steeple came into view.  He saw no cars, but knew that in that town you could walk anywhere.

He opened the main door and looked into the pews...dust modes were in the air as bits of light streamed in from a sun low in Fall.  There was nobody there.  He heard the sound of steps in the adjacent room and turned towards them.  He crossed the doorway and she looked at him.

There had been a lot of words before...shared, crafted...in a close-held moment.  Like water draining from a massive tub they unloaded upon each other until there was nothing left to say...just a little echo.

But the emptying of anything can plague you long after...what new words can be conjured?   What new feelings can be felt?  He thought he knew the answers, felt he could create and keep the freshness of her in a delicate balance...a plucked flower that stayed beautiful long after it should have bent and collapsed.

He was of course very wrong.

And so when she looked up at him and was surprised, she still had nothing to say.  Nothing more to add.  So she departed.  At first she walked slowly but picked up speed as she neared the door...it was the farthest thing from him so he saw her back, her hair swaying slightly side to side...she walked like a model.

She never closed the door but as the grass outside gradually descended towards the road she gently picked up speed until she was in a bit of a loping run.  She ran like she was running from something.  She ran like she never wanted to turn around.  She ran like each step was a word that only increased the distance between them.

He didn't chase her.  She wouldn't have wanted it that way.

Permeate

It is knowing that you are there...a knowledge that allows me to breathe in an air that might be possibly shared by you...

It is a distance, but deceiving...the way a moon looks much closer than it actually is...your proximity is a lot closer than when seen on a map.  Because you permeate me...you fall upon my skin with the ghost of a touch, a distinct tattoo from a grasp.

I do not mind the silent slabs between us...I don't fear the concrete stretch between us...in some ways you are more than a person...a great unwritten book, a collection of poems and portraits...an art display on a private wall in my mind.  Moments captured and remembered...a main reason why you remain exactly the same to me...no difference, no change.

Sometimes you are a great storm...a pattern that permeates my thoughts, disrupting, leaving a vast change in your wake.  And I slowly rebuild, replacing and replenishing...

You are sunlight and oxygen...you are not seen but felt.  You align and mold...meld.  It is the beginning of the day and I put you on like a cloak, to comfort me...to protect me...to remind me mostly.  I wear you in my mind across my shoulders, where I hope I can keep you...and carry you.

At night I do not take you off but rather pull you closer...nestle and clutch you around me.  Hopefully feeling the wrap and the cling of you if only in my mind as you permeate me as I seek to see you in my sleep.

The Inconvenience of Hurricanes

Sure, there is worry...the unknown and the known path of nature that may collide...

There is always some worry in the gap of distance, the gap of time.  The gap of where you once stood, once occupied.  You became a moveable force, your weather patterns alighting upon me...the bright sided mornings when we could spend a moment together...the cloudless sky of an afternoon in a field...the rains and the winds.  I embraced your presence like an afternoon braces for an evening.

But further diminishing my mood was the chance for you to be in slight danger...slight risk.  The absence was even deeper, new moods that weren't familiar.  

Just a word...please, just one word that you are okay.  That you are safe.

It's not a lot of worry...but it just makes the day a little bit brighter knowing that there are no storms between us...real or imagined.

The real ones infinitely worse.

And my helplessness compounded even further.

I miss the you of you...the you of us.

I watch the weather, and wonder if it is raining near you...bringing in some storms to echo outside while you huddle inside...

I wish for you the bright and empty skies...the day freshly scrubbed.  A quiet afternoon.  An evening with coals and the scent of burning wood.

But mostly I just want you to know that I still stare at places...maps...degrees and latitudes of where you might actually and possibly be...and see if I can find myself nearby.

Except on those times when an inconvenient hurricane erupts, pulling me even further away.

A Kiss...the Familiar

Collapse.

Compress.

Let the distance between us descend from feet to inches...let the distance collapse.  Let the eyes guide us in that perfect frame to know exactly where we intend to be.  Let our centrifugal forces align us perfectly as we gently collapse against each other...the weight of the day, the stress of the moments, the heft of being apart tear through the walls and let us collapse into each other equally...finding the perfect angle that we are so familiar with.

Compressing our first very pliable lips into each other like a collision.

Let us collide softly, like two boats that gently feel a tide that drifts them together, the softest brush against each other.  Let us quietly collapse.  Quietly collide.

Comfort.  Let us revert back in time, when the first kisses were curious, seeking.  Complicating and maybe confusing.  Let us know pull forward, when the kiss is comfort...coming to a place so often sought.  Always sought, perhaps never always around...but perfectly familiar when connected.

Let me connect...no.
Let me reconnect with you in a kiss.  A collapse...a compress.  A collision.

Let us join first at our lips and let that kiss linger, our breath still...let the rest of our bodies collapse behind that joining, compress into each other...no longer the two boats gently colliding but rather the way ice melts in bourbon, mixing, intermingling, disintegrating into a combination.

Let the kiss be the introduction into a coming home...a familiar.  A comfort, a collapse.  A giving in, a succumbing to the whatever lies ahead.

Let the collapse compress us together...colliding.  Let it comfort, let it cascade against us, combining. Colluding.  Comparing.

But let us not forget really what it means...despite that familiar comfort...that compression.  What it really means...in that collision.

The craving.

The craving.

Even now,  the distance ascending in not feet or inches but miles and thousands of them...

The craving.

Old Hotels in California

Maybe it's the length of the flight, the delta in the time zones...maybe it's the color of the terrain heading west that becomes more barren and brown, far different from the lush greens and perfectly framed crops that I fly over from East to West.

Maybe it's because I'm supposed to be heading home, but that place was burnt down to the ground...figuratively and literally...it feels a bit like a betrayal.  I committed no crimes in California but I feel guilty when I arrive.  Like maybe I should never have left...like maybe I should have come back and grasped some hands, muddled through conversations...I don't know.

There had been love on the coast, at least in disguise...nights with strange girls who wanted to make love on the cliffs above the Pacific, in deep dark nights when fog rolled in and you could hear the sound of the surf as she breathed in my ear.  But it was like when the fog burned off the next morning in the pureness of a bright planet sun...these girls would dissipate and fade.  Never returning but as ghosts in a fleeting memory.  I think I remember first names...barely...freckles, eyes like blue-linen and the smell of suntan lotions.  But those are in a drawer in my mind, next to mixed tapes and the key from an early BMW.

Maybe it's like an old wound, a broken bone that never quite heals...that reminds you when it's about to rain and it dulls and thuds against some nerve.  I'm not sure...but ultimately California leaves me lonely.

And I think it's because it is evidence that I am even further than you than I could ever be.  It's a continent away, suddenly.  Not a mile or a few.  Not a short drive or time in a plane.

I am far away.  And when the distance between us is this black bejeweled gulf that we don't know how to approach it is a starker distance.  I cannot see a moon knowing it might the same time that you are watching.  I'm on the other side.

A side I have been on before.  A part, apart.

Knowingly, willingly separating is like a reminder of how a day can separate us in its minutes, and in its mileage.  Distance is vague...it can be a hundred feet in a rain or a thousand feet in the sun...if I cannot see you I may as well be some place very far.

But in California I know I am far...a deliberate distance, that I have chosen to undertake, even if just for a few days.

Perhaps it doesn't even really matter...perhaps distance is a drug, euthanizing...deadening...not allowing any sort of pain or memory or fondness or drifting into memory occur.  Distance can be a narcotic, an addicting one.

I feel far from you quite often...mostly in the mornings on waking...and then again in the head down upon the pillow time when I get to blink slowly to sleep.

But in this great distance I feel...

nah, I fear...

that I will feel this sensation more acutely because I am in a strange place...a strange place where I was born.  But never really loved.

No, I saved that for elsewhere.  Some place that tonight is far, far away.

The ways the ocean sounds

It feels different the first time you hear it when you just arrive...the syncopation of the ocean, it is more of a jazz tune as it ebbs and it flows...

It acclimates you...it immerses you in the wind, the scent of the sea, the sand...the ocean is unchanged.  It is exactly, almost, as to when it was first formed.  What you see now is what has been seen for ages....ageless in its gaze.

It is complicated in colors...that change beneath full sun or darkening storms.  The blues become browns and greens...at night it reflects whatever is lucky enough to stand over it.

The ocean is sinew, muscular and molding...it cares not a whit if you join it.

It purrs with low tide and exults at high.  It lets the moon set its mood.

It strokes the sand like a lover, pulling on it, streaming against it, sliding down past the slight incline the way you clutch clothing and gently remove it.

It quarrels against you, nudging you.  It gathers at your knees and moves past you.

I hear such sounds as I remember the ocean...I remember it as complicated patterns and beautiful landscapes...picturesque mornings and indescribable evenings.  

I remember no such equal.  I remember nothing even close.

I remember an ocean and I immediately think of you.

Sorrows

Have another drink...at least one before you go.

A pause...then a no.  No, it wouldn't be appropriate.

There's nothing appropriate at this point...it's well past that.

I know.

So it may as well be a toast...a drink... let's commiserate.  Let's imbue our senses with liquid courage.

I don't need courage now...

I know.

What do you need?

I don't know...it's a little confusing.  It's hard to balance.  It's hard.

Things that are great usually are.  That is what makes them great.

(Silence)

I envy the blind.

What?

I am a bit envious of those who cannot see...they have to rely on touch...the spoken word.  The scent.

Why would you think that.

Because the image of you is forever imprinted on me.  I may never touch you again, never smell you again...never hear you.  But goddamn have I seen you.

And is that a bad thing?

Only if you never appear again.

(silence)