Inside

 Past the pathway.

Past the grasses lining the walk, the quiet familiarity...the summer scent still in full bloom...an evening previously roiled by storms so only the crisp air loitering...

A proximity, not quite close enough to discern but working and walking towards an entrance that is not on any map but rather a pathway in my mind.  I have been there before...I recognize and I remember.

If I were to pause it would only be to smile.

And an urge to walk perhaps even faster...get there sooner.  Arrive.

I see the candles that I wondered if they were still lit and they still are...casting perfect shadows and lighting that is exceptional.  The arcs of cheekbones in my memory...the curvatures that I crave. And the whole time the warm humid air is amongst me, sticking to me...a delicate sweat, a cloying moisture that is a second skin.

A familiarity.

I arrive at the entrance, a few steps winnowing down to a very small point to conjoin.  

There is a moment, when there is a pause and I am outside.  A moment that is just mine.  A pause.  A quickening.

And then I push and I am inside.

I see the candles and I feel the warmth.  I smell the scents of a summer and I am inhaling them.  I look up and I see you there.

Familiar

The room you can maneuver inside while it's dark.  You know where the furniture sits, the sides of walls, the windows...you've traversed this same track so many times...eyes closed, pitch black...doesn't matter.  You find your way.

There are shapes of mouths that become familiar...smiles in kisses, slight openings...you remember a body-temperature...the liquid in a kiss...narrowed down to a place on a face...that can be found in a daylight with eyes closed or a darkened room.  Magnetic.  Drawn into.  Seeking.

When you wake consistently...each and every time.  Red numbers from a clock and you see the 5 or the 6.  Awakening is familiar, an emergence.  But finding the unfamiliar next to you is a presence...the lingering dream-state extended but with eyes open.  But soon, the familiar returns and intertwines and binds.  

The sound an ocean makes...the lightning stabs in an evening...the sound of ice decaying in a glass...the world sounds familiar...begs for the consistent constance...the comfort of sameness.  But what is even more beguiling is the appearance of the unfamiliar in places familiar.  

The dove in church.

The ladybug on the high floor window.

Music from a place that you cannot detect.

A shell suddenly found amongst the wave-wash.

You wish it to remain...to become part of the familiar.  

But it needs to stay rare. 

And in staying rare it can never be part of the familiar.  But it supposes at one point that perhaps it can become more than just a rarity.

The intermittent.  Or maybe the infrequent.  

But the delight is familiar.  The reconnection.  Exceptionally familiar.