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.

Fall

I feel it in my bones, the gradual chilling of the days and the yellowing evenings turning darker ever earlier...the morning fog in the valleys limiting the views of the hills beyond.

I can smell the wood burning, escaping the brick chimneys in languid gray smoke, and I remember the feel of flames crackling in the fireplace, warming and engulfing the first thin pieces of wood that we gradually slowly fed...pieces getting slightly larger...this orange yellow and blue beast consuming everything we placed in it.

I can traverse the leaf-lined walkways...the scent of decaying leaves, wet from cold morning rains and they mute my footsteps...no longer merely crunching under my boots but now soggy, furled and scattered.

Mushed and crumpled.  Waiting to be absorbed once again by the earth from which they first rose.

The sunburnt skin is long gone. The colors of the earth become blended into mere shades of browns, the color of earth, the color of dirt...the colors you see when you close your eyes.

Fall is all about dying...briefly, colorfully.

It churns the dirt like blades plowing, slight graves for seeds and crop...until the winter glaze can enshrine it in its marble.

Mile markers

There is a rhythm on the road...a cadence...like breathing but perhaps with a little more agitation. More pulse...depending on your speed which of course at hers was enough to buckle seat belts and settle in.

Which was ironic when listening to Chris Botti's "Slowing down the world" with the sound of his trumpet echoing in the car, just a little louder above the din of the tires and the trucks.

At this point though it was his drive...his speed and his cockpit taking in the tumbling hillsides and gray freeways...she was smeared on his mind in a way that reminded him of a slight cling...perhaps the way windchimes work...quiet until a breeze disturbs them and then they awaken sonorously and produce a pleasing note or two.  But it takes a wind to create...for now she was upon his mind like a quiet candle.

So he drove.

The songs played and his thumbs kept beat...a steady thump...the car aching to unleash its full power but traffic and trucks had other ideas...he maneuvered and tried to keep a steady pace...but he was fine with it all.  He listened to the music, felt his foot on the accelerator keeping him connected and watched the set of hills start to rise in front of him.

But of course as all things in the mind there is a cavitation...an implosion.  A song comes on and the curtains are pulled back and exposed.  For him it was the "wee small hours of the morning"...sung by Sting.  Background trumpet with Botti.

He was reminded of her shape in the dark...her outline...her geography.

He knew inches and portions, delicacies and familiarities.   Every bit.

And in the echo of the song he felt her absence like a stab...somewhere on him.  Nowhere particular, just visceral.  Like a passerby had glanced upon him and then fled.

Despite the daylight he remembered dark eyes in a deeper blackened room...unblinking.  And as he watched the remaining song timer wind down he remembered the scarcity of her.  The rareness of their time...always a countdown of departure...hours, minutes.  Never a day.  Nothing could ever be for a day.

The hillside was growing lush, the almost-middle of spring...mountains were flourishing with leaves of green and the stray wildflowers along the highway were in full thrush.  He motored by them, hoping to speed wherever he was going...almost hoping to forget the left-behind.

She crept into his mind like the way she crept into bed...a slow, graceful alignment, her cool torso sliding across cool sheets to him, his warmth always a thing between them, with her wrapping herself from the top of his shoulders to their legs and finally her feet rubbing against him...she was always cooler, seeking his heat.

Until her mouth connected with his and then like lights turning on a timer the warmth cascaded.

He remembered this as he drove...stirring a warmth in him that is a memory-pluck...it isn't just a sensation but rather a reaction...atoms-splitting...whatever...his brain was now a leak of her beside him, spilling all over and drowning his emotions with a staggering amount of her.

He passed an exit...decided to stop for gas.  Feeling like he needed to breath in the air that perhaps she had been breathing a bit ago.

Graffiti

Words...

weapons.  Or flowers, gifted.  The most amazing thing of letters is the order of them, the collective.  The formation of them that fall into your eyes, perhaps a murmur on the lips of certain words aloud:

-Love

-Love

-Love

followed by the brain accepting them and allowing them to infer, impact...land.  The circuitous loop that words take is enlightening as I see the you and I attempt to define, refine.  I catch glimpses and stares, side-looks and imaginings.  I see the person, I see the shape...and then I try to describe.  I try to define.  Yet it is my interpretations...what you read is what I capture...my mind the camera, you the model.  I am not a mirror...no far from it.  Instead I absorb and try woefully so to conjure up pretty words...

-pretty

-pretty

-pretty

Like a sprinkle of dew on a Spring grass, except for the part that the only thing close to that analogy is that you are fresh to me, to my eyes, my aperture...you exist and you belong and then I appear and now there is something so much more.  And I attempt to describe it, maybe as I said define it...and whether you believe it or not is not my goal...I want it to be my imprinted clay, that you form on me.

I think that many passersby see you...but not in the way I do. Unfocused.  Withdrawn are they to not see what I see. Perhaps they haven't enjoyed the studies...the long studies of you.  The long looks and the quiet observations.  They will never bring their eyes up and analyze...

-recognize

-recognize

-recognize

The rarity of you...the unknowns of you that layer in tombs and catacombs and unexplored portions...the mysteries and the riddles.  

Like how you leave chalk dust upon me after writing my name on some place and then erasing it.  You try me on, you try me out...

You write graffiti on my heart and you use enough spray paint to finish...written on some place that maybe no one else will see.  And I can live with that image.

Sundays in the Fall

 I remember eyes that perfectly matched the color of her coffee...the color of the James River after a heavy rain...such dark quietness...her blink like the shutter flash of a camera and you were now a portrait in her mind...hung tidily on some wall where she might let you venture.

On a day of worship that is what he did...he fell to his knees and held her above him, his kiss along her thighs, the top above her knees, he felt her hands on his shoulders, her hands in his hair...murmuring her name as he nuzzled her skin...worshipping her on this Sunday.

The sun was late and low these days, the hours of daylight growing smaller, melting like the way sugar melts in water, making the day parts that much sweeter.  She moved around on the porch the same way a leaf would fall adrift from its limb, to and fro, and finally alighting upon him, butterfly soft.  Lips as warm as noon in an Indian Summer, each time rekindling him.  Reminding him.  She spoke in a quiet throat, him straining a little to hear, to catch each careful word...nodding in response.  Pulling her into him, like the envelopment of flannel...she covered him, cloaked him.  He was the barren ground and she was the maple leaves, the beautiful yellow, orange and reds that fell gently...her bareness even more beautiful than when fully clothed, stark and perfect against the dying light of the short afternoon.

She arrived each time as if daybreak...time only started once she walked in the door.  And in her departure, a void like space where no gravity existed and time was stuck blinking and unmoving.  As if winter was an extra frozen month, and slowly warmed but only enough to melt snow into dark gray piles.  A day in noir, a black and white photo of nothing.  That was time away from her.

But not yet...

For now, she was close...close enough to feel like a furnace.  But warming from the inside rather than from the outside...because she was still inside of him, as well as the outside.  On this day of worship he lingered and slowly let fingers become intertwined, praying for the hours to slow down and for the daylight to still burn...just as she did beside him.

Full Tilt Downhill

He needed her.

Needed to return to her, needed her proximity, her closeness...her alignment against him, this calming salve that spread slowly across him and gently drained into his mind, the precursor to sleep, a precursor to dreams...

The days were bricks, laid one by one...whether placing them gently in an otherwise un-extraordinary way,  a simple placement and mundane way placing them slowly on top of each other in some imagined pattern...or smashing them to pieces in a day fraught with excess and stress...fucking unleashing some primitive portion of his brain...the days were bricks and each day he awoke to an unvarnished stack of them. By the thousands.

He was the bricklayer...the calloused hands, the dirty parts, rough-hewed like an old pair of gloves...his heart was calloused and course...he was grit and soured and plain in his days...unremarkable, unregarded, a brick in a wall filled with look-alike bricks...something you could literally see every day and still forget about it.

She.

She was the flower in the sidewalk...she was the harvest moon...she was the butterfly in winter.  The ember that arose from a sparkling fire and blurred itself into the night...she was seldom, she was rare.  And he felt like he had seen her once, maybe briefly captured her for a bright morning second...only to find his calloused hands empty...bereft.  Ugly without even the notion of her alighting on him for just a second and announce her beauty as a cleansing of him...as a brief acknowledgment of him and his dirty soot.

He carried the glance upon him from her like a lover's locket...a chain across his chest, settling above his heart.  She radiated upon him like a shadow, a tattoo...but invisible...not many could see her with him but he clenched that view in his calloused hands.  He caressed it like a baby bird that shivered in his grip.

She haunted him.  She showed up idly in his thoughts like a random cloud in an otherwise brilliant sky.  She invaded him, overpowering any desire to smother her image and her eyes so deep inside of him...a ghost hell-bent on appearing, a bit of water slowly working its way through bricks and finding a way to collapse them.  She worked on him in a way that was quiet...careful.

The way winds carve rocks in the west...the way tides create sandbars and beaches...a slow pace that can impact even the most calloused parts of the earth...the most calloused parts of him...a subtle presence of slight pressure that creates the friction that molds underneath...

so when he was in his dark and ugly place, littered with bricks and pieces of mortar and unfinished walls...he wished for her...murmured words and her name and rubbed his calloused hands to feel a warmth...nothing compared to the friction of her but a poor-man's substitute...

And in his mind...in his thoughts...he was running.  Racing actually...hurtling himself down a hill, everything akimbo, a reckless pace, a relentless drive...full tilt...hurrying himself, flinging himself...to find her...to join her...to align with and be with her.  

Merely be with her.  Quiet.  Quietly.

But still with her.

He placed another brick in place and he remembered and he slightly smiled and turned to the pile of a thousand bricks and he knew he might be able to soon see her...at least perhaps when asleep.

songs from a car

Try that station...no, the one up from that one...

Her voice was slight in the sound of the winds and the music but it was a song to him, her southern tones lilting their way into his ear, spilling against him...certain words, certain phrases...she owned...nobody else could claim them. She was leaning forward in the car seat, turning knobs and working the dashboard...it was a rental and there were some things unfamiliar.

I think you need to push that left arrow he offered...and she just turned and looked at him, that flat gaze when she knew what she was doing...letting him know his suggestions were unhelpful.

Outside of them was the world, tilting to the west....a stretch of highway alongside the Pacific as a great blue ribbon as far as you could see...the sun shining billions of dimes on the surface.  It was warm, a day that felt like there was no need for a thermostat...the warmth of walking into a barn in late spring, a dry heat that didn't move at all.

He had first met her, or come to know her, from outside...a day unlike this day when he was barreling down the road and saw her on a tractor, an older man beside her (her father?)...and returning hours later she was still out there, doing whatever she was doing in this field, great motes of dust surrounding her...the older man gone but she was still driving and working against a barely-there sunset.  He thought about stopping for some random reason but decided it felt early....too early.  Besides, while she looked stunning from the road he couldn't quite tell.  He drove on.

And a few days later he drove past and saw the same thing.

A few more days and the same.

So he purchased a cooler and he filled it with ice and water bottles...on a whim he bought some beef jerky and some hot fries snacks and threw them into a bag.  He drove slowly past he farm but she wasn't there.  He sat there at the edge of the road, hearing the ice melting in the cooler and wondering what was next...

he couldn't find an FM station so he tried AM until he stumbled upon some weird jazz station...he was listening to it briefly when he heard a bit of a rumbling...he glanced in his rear view and saw a tractor on the road.  

She was driving slowly...up and coming behind him.

He heard the ice moving again against the cooler in the front seat.  He put on his flashers.

She slowly came up behind him and started to go around...when she got even with him from her seat she stopped.

Are you okay? she offered.

He looked up at her in the seat...got a pretty decent view.  She was sweaty, reflecting off of her forehead but she had amazing cheekbones and searing dark eyes.  

Uhm, yeah...I'm good.  I was actually waiting for you he said.

She looked ahead at the road in front and then turned to look behind her.  You've been waiting for me?

He looked down at his front seat.  He picked up a bottle of water from the cooler.  Actually, yeah.  Can I give this to you?

He held up the bottle, dripping wet from melting ice and condensation...she kind of released in a way and then said Toss it to me.

So he did and she caught it...first rubbing it across her forehead and then opening it up and downing it in one fell swoop.

So you said you were..."waiting" for me?  She looked ahead again to make sure no traffic was coming, her tractor in the one lane next to his...his car partially off to the other side of the road.

Yeah...he started...I've seen you working the field.  Do you know how you see something from afar...like across a way...and you find it intriguing?  Like discoverable?

She was looking at him flat...nothing to give.  Her hair was darkened by sweat, her hand holding the empty bottle.  I don't really know.

He shrugged a little.  I saw you out there, with someone...it was hot, it was muggy...I was driving by in my convertible with the air conditioning on and I was still hot...and I saw you out there in the middle of this heat and...and I guess I just wanted to give you something to bring you relief.

He patted the cooler, and just looked at her...looking at him.  He then burrowed into the bag and brought up a bag of Hot Fries.

Is this like some sort of bribe? she said

No...no....think of this as....like some sort of icebreaker.

Now in the convertible by the Pacific, she was twirling the knobs to find a suitable song.  From that day long ago she had stayed so aloof and so alone but she had allowed a piece of her to break free.  Her father, the man in the field so long ago had passed away...and she was far away from the farm.  But she had retained that same outer layer...that tough bit of facade...and he had tried to whittle away at it...tried to chip away.  

The ice had been broken, but just barely so.  She still looked with cautious eyes.  She still was quiet more likely than not.   But he looked past her to the Pacific, in its blue depth brilliance, and instead of recognizing that beauty he felt more drawn to the one beside him. Her complicated quietness.  Her depths.

She found a song and they drove on.

Echoes

I wake up and through squinted eyes and a bourbon hangover I see a yellowish gauze coming from the window...it is a reminder...I am alive...in a world...and somewhere in this vastness so are you.

A clock ticks silent seconds and I try to remember what time feels like when I am with you...a racing entity, speeding moments and feelings, unable to catch my breath, hurtling down stairs and inclines, I pray I could cement these moments, carve them on a tree, cutting bark to permanently imprint these frames of my memory...and I fail.  I fail to do anything but to catch a few exquisite moments that flashbulb in my mind before vanishing into tiny dots...

I want you to be a bruise so at least I can touch it, tap it and feel the feeling again...it wouldn't be pain, this bruise of you, but remembrance...a raw, rare sense on my skin...it might hurt to push but it would connect my skin to my brain and back to my heart and the colors would remind me of the marks you have made upon me.

Cotton candy memories spooled out of confectionary sugars, a taste of a stolen kiss, a glance, a stare...compiling these sweeteners on a stick to walk around the fairgrounds of my life.  Sticky, sweet, a quick sucking of my fingers to remind me of the remnants of a place...a time.

I sit in traffic, a thousand taillights...time is a straight line in a lane ahead...seemingly endless...I realize just how fleeting our time is and how there is not stopping...no stop and go...but rather a fluid drift like a river after a rain...a gentle nudging against the earth, a flow that is unstoppable, unrestrained...a calming of alighting upon the earth, the topography and easily floating along top, no obstacles, a trust we are heading to a place together...so very different than when sitting in my car going nowhere.

I hear a song and want to share it...I see a flower and want to grow it...water it and care for it until there is a time when it can be plucked from its darkened earth and in its most beautiful state be pressed into your hand...for you to enjoy, even if only briefly.

We are a flower at its fullest.  We are in a jar on a table emitting colors, vibrant and provocative.  We can be seen from across the room.  And thus we stay...we never wilt or wallow.  Rather, we are this snippet.  This beauty surrounded by the ordinary...

I wake up, with squinted eyes and blink against the gauze of yellow light coming in...and in my mind I hear the echoes of the colors and the flavors and the noises of you.

Like Water

He had never brought her water. 

There had never been a voice from another room, calling out her request...he had never spent a minute on a task so simple, so common...and in all the little things he felt he had done for her for some reason he had never crossed this off the list.

Because he had never been with her at that moment...at least that was his belief.  When the world was a darkening sphere with a moon just under the window shade...when the heavy blankets might have been tugged downwards towards the foot of the bed, the throw pillows collected on the floor. 

A quiet house, perhaps a slight creak when he walked.  The peace of an evening.

He had never invaded this time, never watched as she perhaps disassembled herself from the day, layers pulled over her head, pulled down from her waist...leaving her ready to tuck into sheets and pull the heavier blankets up towards her.

He had seen her plenty of times when in public, had seen her laugh, lean in for a kiss perhaps upon saying hello or goodbye, the delicate scent of her just grazing him.  She hadn't ever needed anything...composed and smiling without a single care in the world.

Care...that was what he wanted...well, rather, what he wanted to provide.  And in bringing somebody water, that glass that will sit by the bedside, providing comfort and usually one of the last moments before closing her eyes...well, that is where he wanted to be.

When she was at her most vulnerable, her most relaxed...her most casual.

He wanted to be there, watching her accept the glass from his hand, maybe take a swallow, maybe smile a thanks...place it beside her bedside and knife her legs under the sheets and start to rest...start to slumber.  

And he would be there, standing as she said goodnight...meaning she was here and she was comfortable with him being there as well...and expecting him to join her...and expecting him to wake up beside her.

That is where he wanted to be...

And In

 And in the carefully crafted questions, in the pillow spill whispers, there was always a single place that might be even better than the one that they were in.

And in the descriptions in their sentences it was the palest of blue skies swooning with scars from high white clouds, cat scratches across the surface above, wavering and bending in high tropical winds.  And in his recollection she had mentioned the flour-like feel of the sand, that indented slowly in their footprints.

And in their world at this place there was never another soul...another human. Rather an infinite absence of any distractions, allowing a full and unfettered focus...

And in the winds there was the slight scent of hibiscus, filagree...a fragrance both familiar yet almost forgotten...until it invaded your senses and pulled you back into a time that you had overlooked for some reason and now you were completely transformed in history.

And in the still wet bathing suits flung to the floor, kicked off in the haste to collide with each other, the coolness of the tile elicited shivers until he could turn the knob of the shower and push it to warm...the waters dousing them as they congregated each other into their arms, their legs a bit intertwined, the quick reach for soap and the slippery suds now glazing them.

And in the drowning sounds of the shower they cleansed...purging the sand and the salt.

Simultaneous Combustion

She called his name and he whispered hers, the sound of her voice almost finished when he started his own.

The tiny black mark left when a lit match touches skin...that split second of pain in the extinguishing of flame...the ending and a beginning, almost simultaneously played out.

There are never two falling stars...but sometimes there are two rainbows.  Seven colored versions...rare.

The outstretched hands of a trapeze artist, reaching out in mid-air...grasping, letting loose and falling only to find the warm grip of another...a togetherness above the net, safely held, and then they were together.

The split seconds.

The blow out of a birthday candle and the immediate wish being granted.

It is the running, the sprinting, the heads-down acceleration and the sweating and the focus and then the tiny subtle stumble, the out of control windmilling of the arms and the gravity effect pulling you in and then instead of a hard crash landing you are caught in some arms and you remember and you let yourself fall and instead of falling you saunter, you slowly glide, you slippery slope into a slumber, you align and you are conjoined and you are still...except for a heart racing from the sprint, still sweaty.

You exhale and you inhale him...and he inhales you.

In an empty church quiet...red letters tell the time on a clock but the day is still.  

We stick.

We stick to each other, names in ears, darkened hair clinging to foreheads...salt of mouths, a warmth that is connected like skin...

Never have the pillows felt like this when we land...never has the ceiling been so blurred.

Never has the outside been so far away.

Never has our proximity been this close, in synch and for some insane reason the beat of your heart merely mirrors that of mine. 

Pauses in the Early Times

 

Looking back, he could only think about geometry.  Physics...timing.

What had led him to intersect her...or perhaps her arc merely melted into his...an apex, an arrival.  A collision.  

Either way, he was surprised when he heard her voice in a place most unexpected...a SoHo bar, late at night, in an evening surprisingly quiet in its weekday wear.  

But there are very few voices that ring the chimes in his head.

Is that really you? she said.  He tilted his head, wondering if the words were even intended for him to hear.  He didn't hear a reply and fully turned.

And she was there.  In a place they had never been together...but now were.  Outside a sudden ambulance siren broke the evening and he had to delay his response, so they stood there...this collision unfolding in silence and she didn't blink once.  Rather she just stared.

Then, it got quiet and yet he was gently reminded how much he enjoyed just the quietness of her and how he could simply stay and stand with her.  Or stare.  Didn't really matter, their were arcs intersecting, complicated algorithms that had landed her here.  

What are you doing here he asked and immediately was regretful and rapidly added I mean, it's rather amazing you are here....but...really.  What are you doing here?

She smiled...she already had a drink in her hand and she was a bit in shadows in the dim lit bar...he could see her face, but not much more.  He could see her eyes though.

I just stumbled upon you.

She cocked her head as was her wont...and regarded him.  

Well, he offered...there is no stumbling.

Yet she replied.

So she joined him and her glass was empty and then it was replenished and they spoke about a million things, nothing special, just catching up...just this arc of a story that suddenly intersected.  They were huddled, hunched together...almost like their bodies made the shape of a heart if you were to see them at the bar.

It wasn't much longer than lights started alighting and the bar became an overhead distraction.  He paid and asked her where she was heading.

South.

They walked a bit, avoiding the uneven bricks in deep Soho streets and the scattered landscape caused them to sometimes bump into each other, a slight move into her,  a lean into him...a random intersection of bodies and sinew and muscles aligning...for just the briefest of moments.  In his mind he accounted for each little movement, his hand in the gentle part of her back, and when the tiny collision occurred it was like flint and rock.  

They ambled down the darkened street, coming into the circle of a streetlight the returning to a shadow.  As they walked and she sometimes got closer he could smell her perfume.

As they passed on particular dark brick alcove he felt her briefly stumble, and he pushed her alongside her back and his other arm came across her front...it was almost a hug but in his mind it was a catch...and she walked backwards a few steps until the bricks stopped her and he was brought closer into her...and in that moment she leaned forward with a kiss...a first quick kiss with cool lips and then he felt her warmth and she intersected and collided with him and her hands pulled him towards her and the geometry of them allowed for the perfect of angles and in the dark, if you could see their bodies intertwined and the shape of them in that alcove it almost like the perfectly drawn curves of a heart.

Soothe

 

She is like awaking to a rain storm...not thundering but rather the brushing of rain against a window, painting the house in the gray colors of a drizzle.  A rhythmic sense, the way a squall builds...the pressure changes, the bit of stillness in the air...then the gradual pulse...the building of ingredients...wind, clouds, and the heavy bit of moisture that fills in the clouds and begs for release.

She is like a puffy-eyed awakening...an over-sleep, when the color in the room is brighter than it should be, the day has gotten away from you, but there is no remorse of the extra hours or minutes that you lingered in bed...scant dreams, barely remembered, just the warmth of covers and unruly hair...an awakening and you are hungry.

She is the butterfly amongst the flowers, the rainbow after rain.

The greenlight just as you approach an intersection.

The salted caramel on the tongue, the bit of chocolate on the angel-food cake.

The IV drip.

She spackles my life, covering my holes, smoothing me in uneven patches.

She sits in an easy-chair in my mind, subtly rocking, subtly moving and stays empty-church quiet until a bit of me gets a splinter and she extracts it and kisses the wound and I barely notice...until she needs to do it again and then it becomes a pattern and she begins to become more than a want...she becomes a need and I awaken to a thought of her...and then I think of her as my day begins and I am soothed.

Echoes

 He awoke in the grey that plastered the city in its shawl, pulled up to its chin, trying to kick off the cold of the morning and knowing there would be no sunrise.  There would be no smooth transition from the nighttime to the day.  No handshake of relinquishing the end of something and the new beginning.

He was cold.

And he knew that she wasn't anywhere close.

Surrounded by millions is a bit like being a kid in the McDonald's playpen, surrounded by balls of colors that are just adornments...hoping you don't get infected by something, someone.  High up above the avenues of the city he hoped for quiet...no sirens, no horns.  Just the smooth sounds of the heat perhaps coming on.

In the awakening of an early morning, the brain craves warmth...comfort...peace.  He felt absence...a gap. He wasn't awake enough to clutch the day yet...but he had resigned himself that the sleep was dead.  It was a gray, blank area when the mind becomes singularly focused.

She came into view.

Well, not her per se, but her presence.  Her curves as she lay horizontal...her warmth, her breath.  A small dent in the mattress beside him...a murmur of breathing...asleep.  It was like she could place her hand on his fast beating heart and calm him...that she could pull him into her and become entangled...

He squinted at the clock...4am.

Too early to rise.

He imagined her near...the scent of her hair and her profile...he could almost imagine her breathing patterns and tried to mimic them...be her mirror...he might even tug her over, have her envelope him...maybe hear her murmur something in her sleep.

But in his male mind he ultimately remembered mutterings of her bliss, and when he had pleased her and in the quiet corridors of New York they echoed in his mind, and he craved the sounds in his ear, the dense heat of proximity, the feel of her against him and the way he placed his mouth over hers to quell her to a quietness that he was now listening to in a room with a view.

It was grey outside his window...but in his mind it was a season like summer and he let her burn herself on him like so many orange embers, echoing in his thoughts and limbs and burning into his memory. 

Winter Solstice

 

When the earth reaches its maximum tilt away from the sun...it is furthest from the glow.  It is the same in every departure of hers as his world grew cold each time, a perma-frost that remained until her silhouette broke across his horizon again.

She nestled in his mind like a cat, furled up and warm, curled up and cozy.  She had started out so very small in his world, barely a brick and now had created something extraordinarily beautiful, a cathedral where he could practice his faith in her...his devotion.  His religion.

An art museum, where he could walk echoing stretches of marble flooring and gaze at perspectives of her...lit by memories and painted in permanence that he could revisit time and again...and each time together added new hallways, new facades in this never ending art of her.

An opulent hotel, but with only one large penthouse suite...with a massive claw-foot tub that overlooked massive city lights...an array of scented candles arranged nearby, with steam arising off the waters that would envelope them...the heat of the waters mirroring the heat of her, when immersed in her.  The slight beads of sweat across a brow, the tips of her hair darkening in the water...

A winter cabin, with no internet access or even phone service, with plenty of split firewood ripened to burn...with outdoor flood lights that illuminate a blizzard...a bed by the window laden with heavy blankets and a fridge filled with liquor.  A calendar with a black marker to measure time in days versus hours...and let those hours be spent together, engulfed in conversation and quietness.

A porch at sunset, oriented to the west, with a bottle of bourbon and a bucket of ice.

A towel on a beach.

The agonizingly empty places that existed when not together...but when together, anywhere, would embody all the places he ever wished he could be.

Good Morning

You say good morning to strangers...you politely await the glance, the brief recognition that their eyes are locked on yours, even if just for the briefest of moments...although if they glance away you only need to nod your head in acknowledgment...but if they linger a bit past a second and maybe even start to cock a smile then you unleash it with full intent.

And there is only so much time for this window of greeting...I don't think people generally say good afternoon or good evening...they say goodnight when closing a child's door or when hanging up the phone after dinner.  It is a hopeful term where as good afternoon/evening are polite bit of rhetoric that could be solved by merely saying hello or hi.

She liked to say hi, at all hours.  First thing in the morning or when we came up for air after an elongated kiss.

It was a friendly greeting, simple and intimate.  Probably the shortest way to say something but it carried in her tone something so much deeper...almost to the point where you felt like it was exclusive to you.

and it usually was because she saved it for when there was no distance between us...and we had come to find ourselves there...interlocked, intertwined.  Like we had discovered a reveal...unraveled a bow around a box and found sudden treasure.

It wasn't a code we spoke...although at times he had to pull words out of her like hard steel nails rusted into weathered wood.  But over time words occasionally spilled unexpectedly, a break in a dam...and he grasped for them like one attempts to catch water or rain...an impossible feat but he could feel tiny bits hitting his hands and his fingers but mostly they fell away and soon evaporated.

And there was the one time, the first time...when she calmly asked do you wanna make love?

As casual as asking to pass the salt, as comfortable as asking to turn up the heat...but in this case the spice and the source of warmth were her and it was an offering...no shyness, no ambiguity.  Declarative.  Yet in her soft spoken notes it was gentle and affirming.  She already knew the answer.  But hearing it inside my mind I finally did catch the rain, I finally clutched the water and I got to hold it in my hands and consume it, breathe it in, bask in it...and it wasn't even really a question as much as it was an invitation.

An Episode

She opened the door slightly, her hair up and she was leaning through

the brief gap in the

doorframe…

she smiled and opened it up wider, revealing that she was wearing a

robe.

She walked slowly towards the mirror, the robe gaping in parts…

tiny glimpses

of a Christmas package being slowly unwrapped…he sat on the

edge of the bed,

saw her and her reflection intertwine like an upside down v

as she applied colors and powders…she would

occasionally glance at him and raise an eyebrow. 

It was like a dare. 

Somewhere inside of him,

like a click of metal upon metal, a spark bloomed

into a pilot light blaze.

Outside the bathroom in the expansive space some music played,

too low to

hear the words but enough to be noticeable.

One table lamp was on,

lighting up a tiny corner of the room where

the rest of it was in a glow

from the late afternoon sun spilling in from the

large window. 

Near the bed two candles burned in tiny whites and yellows. 

The space felt like a spa and her proximity

made it even more languid…

her movements were liquid, like she was underwater…

from his view she fluttered in and out of the scene,

a ballet of preparation…

and he caught parts of her scent, her lotions and perfume. 

She smelled clean, the entire room felt showered and

scrubbed and her glances were

lingering upon him as much as

the soap sensation he inhaled.

She came to him and leaned down to kiss him. 

A demure bit of a hint. 

Something portending.  The whiff of copper

before a lightning strike.

Her mouth was warm and relaxed…it was a greeting. 

But her eyes had been open and they

squinted something more inviting…

a bit more promising.

If she was a recipe she was the

type handed down from a southern

grandmother’s hand…old school

cursive with lard as a critical

ingredient and a loving amount of

measurements poured out from

memory versus math….

the heft and feel of flour or a rolling pin

that had seen its days…

perfection handed down via generations,

never skimping or deviating but

rather just evolving slowly until

the taste on the tongue was perfection…

each and every time.

If she were to be a rain storm she would

be in August, in the heat

of summer after an oppressive afternoon

with low dark rumbles

starting to echo in the outskirts of an evening…

a relief effect of

anticipating the cooling impact upon arrival…

when the lights in

the house blink on and off due to the interruptions…

the flash-bulb moments and the near immediate thunder…

concussive….

the smell of the rain and the noise on the roof…

you felt safe inside but were amazed at the

rawness outside…

and when you slowly succumbed to your

bed the splashing and

winds became calming…

white noise that helped you to sleep.

If she was a season she would be Fall…

mercurial, at times like an

Indian Summer, blooming after a

season of heat and signaling the

temperate ways of cool mornings

yielding to warm afternoons…

they type of day you want to start

with in bed, layers of covers

and then emerge to a gauzy fog

only to have the sun burn through it…

and be warm upon the bricks of a stoop…

meanwhile,

the colors exploding around you,

twirling to the ground

and a thousand versions of

red and orange ultimately

turning to the color of her brown eyes.

He leaned back on the bed,

smelled the candle

burning its scent into the air,

the afternoon yellowing

through the window and the soft music playing.

He had found perfection.

Crisp

 I am your fall.

I fuel the sugary sap within you, the pulse of you across your limbs, the oxygen you create as you take my toxic air within and breathe out the impurities of me.

I fill your mind with a thousand leaves, brightly and brilliantly colored...and then, soon, I become a memory...flicked from your fingers to lie at your feet in tiny shades that mirror sunrises and sunsets...and lay there, quietly...until somebody else walks by, crushing tiny spines and crackling in the crisp of a season.

Or perhaps gathered into handfuls and put into a burn-pit...smoldering like the way I burn for you.  Inhaling a scent only known in an October or November.  This is the scent of a harvest time, when a world is turning...a decay that is beautiful and quickening.  

It is the way the sun shimmers in the branches and remaining leaves of a treeline that was once all shade...like a whittled down forest that loses its protective coverings...stick-figures where once full bodies stood.

I want to cling to you, clutch you.  I want to open up like an unfurled leaf craving the sun...veins of me rich with your light...

But I fear I am soon seasonal...in a bit of blaze I tumbleweed down and join the forest floor...but I am grateful as I gaze upwards at your arms, knowing I was once embraced...and perhaps I can return some day in a spring that reminds me of the endless season that I find in you.

Jazz

 Here...

He walked into the room where she was reading, comfortably on the couch...somewhere Sonos was playing some light instrumentals...she looked up and saw he had a bag from a fairly exceptional boutique.

What's that? she said.

He set the bag down next to her and she pivoted and put down her magazine.  She pulled out the crepe paper and pulled out an ivory dress that came out of the bag like a long rope.

For tonight, he said...and don't wear a bra.

It had rained that evening and the streets were reflective and starting to shudder with the first sparse evenings near fall...it was a combination of humidity and chill, and it made her hair curly up a bit.  Stepping out of the Uber he took her hand and she unfolded out of the seat...she was stunning and somewhat hunched as she got out and then, standing straight up she turned to him slightly.

She looked down at herself.

Well....I guess this will make quite an entrance.

He half smiled...nodding. Thank you for allowing me to dare was all he said.

He brought her into him in a clutch, smelling her soap and shampoo...and kissed her where her hairline met the back of her neck.  She turned towards him and her mouth was the warmest part of her body and the street was wet with recent rain and the evening smelled scrubbed and it was if they both were completely undressed but they were amongst strangers to they behaved.

There was a short walk to the entrance with the yellow lights carving into the sidewalk...the entrance where sounds spilled out and you could hear the high tapping of a cymbal and the low drone of a saxophone...and entering it, whispering his name to the maitre de, who accepted his folded bills and nodded and drew them down towards a table near the stage.

He remembered something he had read...and wished he had written it himself...as he sat down next to her, the darkened room filled with strangers and a common desire...the scent of cigarette smoke and he wished he had remembered to buy her a pack and watch her...it was one of his favorite views...anyways...he recalled the passage...

Jazz, at its very core, is sex. The one begs the other. Harmonic tension, rhythmic tension, and even melodic tension, followed by release matches the feel of the moment, passion and unrest bent up inside a person before the ultimate and sudden exhale.

so he watched her settle in...

Thought about her begs...which she never did and never would...if anything it would be him to her.  But the tension...he loved it.

He watched her reach into her purse and watched her pull out a pack of Marlboro lights...she glanced at him like seeking approval as this was a rarity...but her wearing a clingy gauze outfit that showcased her nipples was already pushing the norm so there was no need to do anything other than nod...so she unfurled the plastic and pulled delicately on one single thin cigarette to extract from the box.

(Now in his past his father has smoked and he had a zippo lighter that opened with a click and you thumbed the little circle and a flame was created...in this moment he knew he had missed an awful opportunity to pull something out of his suit pocket and unleash a flame, perhaps her hand touching his slightly as she pulled it close to alight her, her first inhales as the embers glowed a fast deep orange and a few puffs of smoke that she tried to blow away from him)

Instead she pulled out a box of matches so he reached across and took them from her, snapped one of them against the side and produced a flame...but she did take his hand and pull it towards her...an extremely intimate moment as she brought the fire near her face, regarding him the whole time...the few inhalations, exhalations and she sat back and he withdrew, waving the match extinct into a smoking little black stick.

The evening played on, the sounds conjuring up just a world that was contained inside the room...the sweat of the musicians, the smell of cigarette smoke, the occasional sounds of ice in a glass...she was smoking again but she had slid closer to him and was resting against him...they kept ordering drinks and a few bits of food and when she had leaned over to kiss him she tasted of jazz...a combination of something assembled, her senses and her wants, her evening and her letting go, her trust and her tiny, tiny hints of something that was present just underneath her skin but goddamn there were other people in the room.

The uber ride home was quiet and she slept.  He actually helped her out of the car and with one arm around her he led her upstairs and made the decision to let her sleep in the cling of the dress.  He got her a water and took off her shoes.  She murmured some things and she told him how relaxed she felt.  

He put her into bed and he aligned upon her as she lay on her side.  He whispered some words into her ear and he could feel her smile.