You Know...that One Time

It must have been a thousand degrees, maybe a million more.  In the dense humid air of the tent the sun was an orb that was moon-shaped against the outline of the tent.  They had awakened to a day in full tilt.

Why had we slept so long?

Because of the evening.

Why had we laid awake, listening to the chirps and harmonies of nightfall...frogs full of throat, crickets attracting others, the whirl of darkened, startled birds...the night sky was exploding above us in such untouched blacks and stars, piercing constellations and the occasional skid of a golden streak of something falling and if we had murmured out loud our wish we would have said the exact same thing...

I wish I was here...
now...
and I wish it would last.

Time was well past dark...and not an hour, but colors.  It was dark, so it must be late...but the stars don't care so neither shall we.  Let's just stay here, unencumbered, touching at hips, arms, maybe at hands...maybe we swipe at a bug that is a nuisance but it's getting cooler so we are slightly moving closer together, inches, increments, trying to stay warm, eyes full of stars, of distance, of a vastness where we understand how minuscule we are but when we are together we are ferocious.

We tire.  It is the comfort of a familiar friend, an intimate...it lets us drop guards, drop our arms.  It lets us reveal, and appreciate and in our vulnerable state we realize that we fill our gaps with a person who fills our gaps.

We grow comfortable.  We clutch.  We pull and tug into each other as if we are each other's blanket...warming, clinging, comforting and consoling...night spilling into our eyes like dark from a dropper, spilled in drips to tire our gaze and slow our blinks.  Comfort...safe...relaxing where our breath is mixed together, the ultimate sign of acceptance and empathy.

Which is why, in the hot warmth of a morning, when the breath is exhaled between the fury of a kiss, when the night clothes have been shed and the eyes may still remain clench-closed but the breathing is hastening and the clutch has been more animated and more violent and the slight beads of sweat begin at the brow but soon glisten against each other's flesh and the memories of the dark night are now colliding with the orange-browns of a sun against a tent and the tent is still zippered and the air is bright humid but the eyes are still closed...the wishes are still being made, the blankets of warmth are replaced with the skin upon skin and we definitely do not need a blanket but we fall and we tumble and we are like stars burning and streaking upon a sky so that somebody, anybody may make a wish upon us but it is too late because we have already claimed every wish as our own....and we peek our eyes open and it is day and it is morning and we smile against the mouth of each other, we taste the sweet succulence of each other and it is because we know that everything that we wished for hours before has become suddenly and stunningly true.