Firsts

                                                               “Strike-anywhere Matches”

In the end, it wasn’t the last things she did that stayed with him; rather, it was the series of firsts that she did that stayed with him, but each a cut deeper than he had initially realized. 

The car actually needed to be towed, from that remote space on the highway, and while she initially told him that she’d be fine she waivered when she saw the tow truck driver get out of the cab. 

               You’re not leaving me with him.  It was a directive, not a suggestion.  The driver, about 60, weighed well over 300 lbs, tugging on a rag kept in his back pocket, belly straining against a stained brown shirt with his name on it.  Ned.

               He didn’t remember a whole lot about Ned’s fussing with the car and hoisting it up off the two front wheels.  He remembered her standing pretty close to him though, not seeking protection, but just close enough to be noticed.  He didn’t want to keep looking at her, so he watched a few hawks circling above the trees.  Sporadic traffic kept them on the dirt by the road, still somewhat muddy from the rain.  But the air smelled clean, and in the slight breeze he could smell the shampoos from her still-wet hair, a  soapy and distinctive hint.  At one point she reached over to his shoulder, putting her hand on him while she raised a leg to let a pebble out of her sandals.  The sudden first touch was a surprise but it was like she had put her hand on a tree.  She didn’t ask, she just did.  And when she finished she merely released and resumed watching her car get cranked up into the air.

When Ned finished he indicated she should ride with him in the cab.  He remembered looking at her as she blanched and when she looked at him he had a wry smile.  You’re coming too she said.

               What about my car?  You want me to just leave it here?  

She answered by narrowing her eyes. 

As Ned climbed in the entire cab teetered that way and they looked up and into the seats.  The cab had a 4-on-the-floor shift and Ned was spilling over half of the bench seat. 

               You first she declared.  He climbed up, feeling Ned’s heavy presence and then she came in.  She squeezed the door shut and they rambled out of the road’s shoulder and into the north towards Elgin. 

The trip was noisy, high up above the blacktop, the tow truck ambling around 50 miles per hour.   He breathed in the sweaty proximity of the driver and the delicate presence of her.  She had her elbow on the window sill, staring out the glass with her chin in her palm.  She watched the sweep of trees and the crisscross of farm to market roads that shot out in directions away from them.  Now and again her left knee would glance off of his, uncontrolled and likely giving into gravity with the decided tilt of the cabin courtesy of Ned.

But at one point her leg, her knee…her calf, her thigh…they sidled up against his and stayed.  He looked at her but she kept her gaze on the right side of the road, unblinking, no change in expression.

It was like a strike-anywhere match had been lit and thrown against his skin.  Her leg was warm, denim-clad and it felt like it had cleaved into him.  He didn’t want to move.  He actually had probably stopped breathing and when he remembered to exhale he felt like his right side was glowing.  So he stayed rigidly still, not wanting to move the slightest that might move her away from him.  He almost felt like moving away slightly to see if she would follow but he realized that he was where he wanted to be.

He felt like he could feel the pulse in her, the heartbeat as the femoral artery churned the life blood through her.  He felt like he could feel how alive she was, even with her just staring out the window.  He felt the heat of her, the friction of her, and the visceral part of her that pulsated beneath her skin.  It was a simple touch of her leg against his but in his mind she had scorched his landscape, left it dry and hot-blown. 

Half of all forest fires are started in high summer by lightning strikes.  Catching the dry and kindled wheat and straw like gasoline that explodes and breathes hot breath across hundreds of acres of trees.

Here, in the cab, high above the Texas blacktop, he watched the road stream by, his mind careening in colors of orange and white, and the thoughts of a thousand one-hundred foot oaks ablaze.

Eskota II: Changing Tires in a Rain

He remembered seeing her for the very first time, and how it felt like when you have fallen in love with a song and it suddenly plays on the radio without any warning at all.

He hadn’t really seen her clearly, just a fast buzz-blur of hair from beneath the open hood of a car. He was on 95…not the big one, the little one east of Austin that cuts through Bastrop State Park with its stands of Loblolly pines, a pretty little spread of color against the tannins of the land. It was April in the Hill Country, the wettest month of the year and it was spitting rain already.  Nothing major, but ahead he could see the traditional bruising in the sky that signaled some storm was about to be unleashed.

The flashers on her Jeep Wagoneer were on, and in this particular version, the 1974 version, the spare tire was on the front.  He slowed so he could see the trouble and that’s when he saw her. 

Trouble that is.  Lean and coming out from beneath the hood like a bird flushed.  Her eyes widened as he pull alongside her car and he rolled down the window.

It’s going to rain he said. 

She cocked her head around the hood, looked up.  Perfect she said.

She had a very angular face set off by two lengths of blondish hair that hung straight above her shoulders.  I’m almost done, she said, bracing her hands against the spare and starting to unloosen the bolts.

You haven’t even jacked up the car.  Do you mind if I pulled over and helped?

She moved towards his window and looked in, a sprig of her bangs falling over one dark eye. 

I’m not dangerous he said. 

She crooked on corner of her mouth.  I wasn’t worried. 

It will be raining soon he repeated and before she answered he pulled up past her and turned off his car.

He had a moment, listening to the ticking of the engine still counting off seconds, and he looked at the storm ahead, with the road perfectly seeming to rise right up into it.  What the fuck am I doing?

 

He had helped her out when the rain came swashbuckling down, huge crates of it.  In one flash of the storm’s lightning he had been on his knees, undoing the jack and he saw her looking out at him through the driver’s side window.  The pane was rivulets of water streaking down, and her hair was still wet from when she was outside until he almost pushed her into the car.  He remembered thinking that she looked sad, not grateful, not really anything but feeling like she was lost.  Or locked.  At least that’s how he described it to himself.  Rain pouring in streaks across the glass in front of her face.  No smile, no anything.

He took the jack and opened the back of her Jeep and set it down on the carpeted bench.  As he was closing the door her heard her say something, not quietly but noticeable but it was cut off when the door slammed home.

He was going to walk to the driver’s side when he saw her open up the passenger side door.  It’s pouring she said, clearly hearing her as he walked over.  Hurry up.

He closed the door behind him, dripping wet and breathing a bit faster than normal.  He pulled a hand through his hair, drops falling onto his soaked body. She sat there looking at him.

I probably could’ve done all this myself, she started.

That’s a hell of a thank you.

Well…thank you, she murmured quietly.  I was getting around to saying it.

The strobes of some lightning played in, and he saw her a little bit better.  Her eyes were almost the same color as outside.

Well you’re welcome.  Probably the nicest thing I’ve done today.  He let out a slight laugh.  Probably the nicest thing I’ve done in a hell of a long time.

You changed a tire, you didn’t give me a kidney.

He looked at her with his head tilted.  You must really have a high bar for gratitude.

She smiled and said, I think you’re probably correct.

Well…he let the words take hold and fill the car… think I’ve done enough.  He cracked the door open and let himself into the pouring rain.  It was abating a little bit though, and as he walked to his car he didn’t quite feel it.

He turned on his car and saw that her flashers were still blinking.  He shook his head and pulled out into the highway.  As he drew away he looked back in his rearview mirror.

She had left her car and was standing in the middle of the road.

From where he was she was a slight frame…in a minute she would be a dot.  In another minute she would disappear from view.

He had a moment, listening to the growling of the engine still counting off seconds, and he looked at the clearing clouds ahead, with the road perfectly seeming to rise right up into it.  What the fuck am I doing?

He slowed down, feeling his heart pick up a bit, and at the same time feel angry at his loss of control.  He pulled over, and realized he couldn’t see her from the angle of the road.  Goddamnit.

He turned the car and from the rise he could see her still next to her car.  Actually she was in the middle of the road, a light color against the blacktop.  The storm had broken up and now and again a filtered beam of sun came out. 

Hello she said as he pulled up next to her.  He waited, car engine on, waiting for her to explain.  Or define.  Or say something longer than a sentence.  He had no idea why he was there, but something felt like a rescue.  Something felt like he had a fish-hook in him, that he could tug and pull and drive away as far as he could but he would still be winded back up and brought to her.

Why are you standing in the middle of the road?

Why did you come back?

I came back because you were standing in the middle of the road. That’s why I came back.

She continued looking at him, hands in her back pockets.

I wanted to see if you’d come back.  I wanted to see if you noticed.

He took a long pause. 

I noticed.

He watched as a glint of sun came out and landed between them, the day tinged yellow with a glistening along the dark pavement. 

I figured it would show up.  I just wanted to wait.

She was looking over his car, and he couldn’t see from inside so he got out.  High above them was a perfectly brilliant 7-colored rainbow. 

You rarely see the indigo and the violet.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen them this close.

He listened to her and watched and somewhat foolishly realized his mistake and his assumptions.

I’m sorry he said.  I didn’t know that you were waiting for that.

Oh I was waiting for you too.  I just wanted to have both. She smiled at him and in the crisp bright air he couldn’t help but see her against the sky, against the colors.  And framed against the afternoon he realized that in returning to her he had simply surrendered without even knowing.  And she had known it the moment he had stopped to change her tire in a rain.

Lightless Star, Scentless Flower

Uneasy sleep, so easy to sleep, collapsing in the middle of a muddled afternoon, gray dim light spilling in as the tips of high-up oak leaves strain in colors above the ground.

Fall is the decaying drift back into the ground; the fallen fruit discarded to return to the earth.  It is the graying air in the mornings, split by low suns a minute later in each new dawn, and a wind that bites cool.  It is an evening that seems guided by a lightless star, breaking in colors of a scentless flower. 

Fall is the cocoon of an afternoon, pale daylight streaming through holes in the trees, a silence like wet-leaves across the day.  Slumber comes easy as pillows grow warm and time blows dandelion-like in languid suspended air. There are covers and coverlets, lazing dust motes and somewhere the television may flicker emptily.  It is an afternoon, weightless as a lightless star, calming as a scentless flower.

Fall is the char of the wood, burning and crackling as it folds and immolates into itself, burnt oranges and blues to lick the air around it.  Fall will wrap itself around me, entangle me as its once green-garden vines now turn golden, slowing my movement and pulling me downward.  Fall is an afternoon nap, in the mid of September, as I try to hold onto the last sunburnt day in summer.  Somewhere between colors, somewhere between days, somewhere where I find the lightless star and the scentless flower.

Eskota

And she had asked in that casual way of hers if he knew Texas.  And he had stopped, there in the copper-colored dusk, and said he did.

No, she shook her head as the words tumbled out.  I don’t think so.  I don’t think you’ve seen the low moon.  I don’t think you’ve woken up to stand in an evening with enough stars to make you feel small.  I don’t think you know Texas at all.

He watched the fence line disappear down the horizon, a black line cutting a fine swatch against the field.  The road shimmered in slight waves in the distance, and he could just barely detect the faint soap smell of her. 

What am I supposed to know, then?  Is this a place?  Is this some sort of fucking attitude?  Can I learn it if I wasn’t born here in some sort of sacred ritual?  He walked the short space between them, her one arm across her holding the elbow, a slight cross against her chest. 

What do you see in me? she asked. 

I see everything.  I see blank canvass, I see unknowns.  I see an ocean that I would gladly drown in.  I see a storm that never goes away. I see a world on fire.

He reached out and held the tips of her finger.

 I see something no language would adequately describe.  I see you. 

She stared, a few blinks.  I am as much a part of this place as…trailing off she waved her hand across the expanse.  I’m as much a part of this place as anything.  I am the smell of salt air in Galveston, and as dry as the river bottoms near El Paso.  I am open, unending.  You cannot just simply try to contain me.

I’m not trying to contain you. 

You’re trying to shape me though.  Into something that you want.  It’d be like catching rain.

It was growing purple in the air, the evening tinted and tattooed with dark spots.  A little bit of orange remained, burnishing the edge of the flat horizon. 

Do you know how they make honey? He asked.  She turned her head to him.  He could barely see the colors of her eyes, dark against dark.  But he knew she was looking at him.

Honey?  You mean like bees?

Yeah, exactly.  You take this perfectly shaped…structure.  This work of art almost.  And you tear it in half, you crush it and you extract the honey from it.  It’s only sweet when it’s broken.

Is that what needs to happen?  She approached him and he could see her eyes much better now.  And there was a hint of storm in them.  I need to break to be better? 

Not you.  Us.  If I can’t be the other part of you, then maybe I need to be broken off.  Ruptured.

She was silent and her silence was darker.  It was almost pitch-black in the air but he could feel it heavy against him.  It was like the moments between lightning and thunder.

I don’t know if that is what I want.  I only know what I am here, what I have here.

He inhaled the cool air and watched her disappear.  She had never really been there, rather, he remembered the last time they had spoken.  He remembered how she had left, the contrail of her departure.  He still came out here now and again, turning off the road and stopping in the flat low land.  He remembered how he had tried, and in trying he remembered how she had pulled away.  How ultimately they had broken, and how it never was sweet at all.  In fact, it was exactly the opposite.

Graffiti on Overpasses

It is the bloom of high pink in your cheeks.  It is the salt that brims on your forehead, the mercurial color that warms in the heat like a litmus, the sun blazing upon you and releasing the tannins and rising against your skin in pastels.

There are words to describe, words to define.  Words that carry a weight unnoticed until the slight moment when you might remember them and they thud down the stairs of your mind.  Words, like graffiti on overpasses, that you quick-glance upon and move on.  Yet they tattoo.

I try, with the paint brush tip licked upon my lips, to color in the commentary.  I try to do the portrait.  I try to do the scene.  I try to kaleidoscope the stark beauties of you into a sentence.  I try to fixate on a part that can reveal, a part that can sheen.  A cheek, a slight portion of you.  An eye.  Unblinking.  A piece that maybe you concern with what I find haunting.  And find an unmasked color.  A crayon yet unnamed.  Somewhere lost in the box.  The casual glance of a passers-by going beneath a bridge, where graffiti litters the overpass.

The pinprick of a stylus.  Words inscribed and word released, exposed.  The trouble with words is that the prisoners have escaped the tight prison from which they were born.  There are no pardons, no bail.  Once written they bloom like weed-petals and depend on air to care and to feed.  And they usually loiter and linger and crumple like burnt paper and collapse.  Ashes from a bridge destroyed, burnt and broiling in the destruction of graffiti in overpasses.

Try to whitewash it.  Try to color it gray or white.  Try to paint over the simple pierce of skin and the deep wound it causes and rarely recovers.  Try to remove the sweet stain of you against a skin that is burnt and scarred from you.  And in the closing moments...when your mind stirs itself asleep, when it careens with the avalanche of the day, and you spend a few seconds in a place that you had not noticed...the graffiti on the overpass blooms in your mind, coloring your evening, cascading against the blacks and whites and finds your eyes closing in a collapse of colors that you might not have noticed.  The strokes of a scene that I embedded into you.

Solstice

I used to gauge how deep I was into the summer by the length of the blacktop I could walk in my bare feet.

And dove into a pool that had barely crested 54-degrees because it was officially opened and I wanted to be the first one in…my pale 10-year old body a mass of shivering ribs and lips the color of the deep-end.

My favorite candy was the candy necklace, and I would eat some bit-parts of it and wear the rest around my neck, the sticky candy leaving tiny smears of sugar and color across my collarbone.

We’d store quarters in our tennis shoes, waiting for Adult Swim, waiting for the clanging of the Good Humor man…he had it good and easy…one stop in front of the pool and he made his killing…push-ups were popular but I didn’t like the way they melted along the cardboard.  Nutty Buddy was my favorite ice cream, the ultimate combination in crunch and chocolate.   My friends and I, tucked on the lawn in front of the pool because we couldn’t bring in food…glancing nervously at the high dive and waiting to go back and fling ourselves off into the bright hot space of summer.

Summer became a convertible, and a row-boat on a lake.  Summer is mentioned in days, not hours as the heat and humidity crawl and cover you in its gauze.  First kisses that tasted like popsicles, sugary and tart and you forgot about the weather.  Your throat tightening as girls in bathing suits pulled off tee-shirts and slid off shorts and walked into waves.  Tanned skin flashing in angles and the dripping of hair as they came close to me, barely sensing the scent of the ocean upon them.  Towels laid over hot black leather seats and the chill of wind on the drive home with the top down.

Summer was the music on a boom box, the music of cicadas, the night-stir of insects.  Blue shades of sprinklers setting off at dusk.  The sky was the color of a creamsicle in the late afternoon.  The hint of sunburn felt like a stolen kiss, unaware, leaving a heat that lingered. 

 

One summer we went to Baja California, where I saw an octopus roll one arm out in a wave and watched my sister scream and never go near the water the entire trip.

Another we drove across America, and saw the Painted Desert National Park at sunset.  The Hoover Dam.  But mostly we were in the car, and we were very hot.

One summer I spent in Airborne School, head-shaved and stuck in a barracks in Georgia.  19 years old and being thrilled to death.  Silver wings and a hope that I never would have to do that again.

One summer I learned on a star-lit night that half the stars we see are dead.  And only now are we able to see their light.  I remember my friend explaining that to me and I was completely speechless.  I remember somebody had set a fire on the beach, and I wondered if anybody in space could see it.

One summer I was lighting fireworks on the beach, big rocket types.  Probably illegal.  And we were drinking, just two kids drinking Lowenbrau because we thought we were refined.  And I lit the biggest rocket we had, maybe two feet high, and I started running…only to look behind and see my friend watching from the launch pad.  And my horror when the rocket went up 50 feet and came straight back down, hitting my friend on the ankle.  He limped home, bitter and mad.

One summer my two best friends in high school were arrested for breaking and entering houses in our neighborhood to steal items to sell for drugs.  And I was away at camp.  And how bittersweet it was because they asked the police to go to my house and assure my parents that I had never done anything, that I had never entered or helped.  And I remember those moments when I knew they were inside a house, and I would go walking. Away, just nonchalantly.  Just not being there.  But knowing what was going on.

One summer at this camp I asked a girl in high school to go out to visit the graveyard, which was the scene for finding a place to make out.  And she said no, and I was sad but I figured I’d find somebody else.  And that night, my friend and I saw her out with another guy.   Heading to the graveyard.  She tried to hide her face, but I knew it was her.

One summer I fell in love.  And in another summer I fell in love again. 

One summer was the perfectly round sun, in a cloudless sky, as we drove away from our wedding, hanging just barely on the ledge of the West.  We were in a classic 1930’s limousine, complete with an old man in a driver’s uniform. 

 

I cannot wait to see what this summer brings.

Night breaks, Night cuts, Night falls

The blackness is the color of your eyes, an almost-evening sky that lies in wait as the day hurries behind trees and hills, pulling golds and oranges behind it.  Hues of blues, hints of bruises as the night thuds against my head, it's crushing like a black pill powdered by a pestle.  Sprinkle the evening amongst my eyes, blurring and blackening, let me see stars as the weight hits me.  Night breaks.  Night cuts.  Night falls.

Alone in an evening, surrounded by the mistakes of the day.  Consumed by the last, unpushed domino.  Awake in anticipation that hurrying to sleep might bring me perhaps to the nearest point that I could be to you.  With you.  Whatever.  Doesn't matter.  Blackness is measured in depth, not distance...there may be no other side, or it might be right there close.  Doesn't really matter.  Night breaks.  Night cuts.  Night falls.

Cooling, breathing, quiet night air noises that steal in and pretend to stroke and whisper me to sleep.  They remind me of a word unspoken, just slight vapors that remain unrevealed, waiting to be released.  They flow across me in wordless flight, reminding me of an almost-touch, almost-glance, an almost-reveal.  They thud heavily across the expanse of the bed.  Night breaks.  Night cuts.  Night falls.

A hot red blood pulses behind my clenched-closed eyes, a sheet gripped in a frustrated grasp of a hand, a sheen of slight sweat pearls against my skin.  Unseen in the dark, I count the tiring sweep of hands across a clock face, begging for the night to under-tow me in.  I wait for the footfalls of an evening to reach my door, my window.  I wait for night, like a knife, to prey upon me.  I wait for the crumble of an evening to block out all the stars and suffocate me to sleep.  Night breaks.  Night cuts.  Night falls.