Shipwreck

I hope you wake up casually...gradually.  A new place, where new light from familiar suns comes through and you awaken to a day that is extraordinarily yours...to do what you want, to lounge, to loiter. 

A day to spend in a breeze, against a tide.  A day before it's officially summer so you hold onto this one last piece of Spring. 

The scent of the ocean, the grays and greens of the Atlantic...I hope there is at some point, some hour when the colors remind you of my stare, a matching hue that lasts perhaps just a moment, but reminds you of how I crash into you, shipwrecking myself on your banks and your curves, your awaiting sands and colors and how I happily extinguish my voyage by arriving exactly to where you are.

I hope you wake up slowly, soothingly.  I hope you have an amazing day in the sun.

Mumblings

So how would you describe her?

I listened to the question, looking up at the tiles in her office.  They were fairly old, some with water marks like a long ago leak had stained them.  The leather couch (obligatory) was well dented, and smelled slightly of tobacco.  It wasn't a totally unpleasant smell...it felt like a reminder, or perhaps others had spilled here too.

Could you put on some music I asked...hating the pale silence in the room.  She nodded and walked over to a radio and briefly touched the top button...a commercial was playing so she fiddled with the dial and soon some jazz spilled out.

thank you I mumbled.

So, let me ask you again...how --

Would I describe her? I interrupted.  Well...I closed my eyes and let the music splinter into my ear.  It was more soothing than the leather, less familiar though...I could feel the indentations of those who preceded me on this leather, spilling tales and woes.  I had neither.  I just had an emptiness that was soon becoming an ache.  And then it became a sleepless episode.  And then it became a month of zero sleep and hundreds of work.  And somebody said I should go see this person that they knew.  And that it might help.  And after an elevator ride into a darkened office with a name on the door I was laying on a couch.  Asking me to describe somebody who I found indescribable. 

She reminds me of a color...

A color?

A color.  Just let me finish...a color that you would try to describe over the phone to somebody who had never seen such a color.  Or a taste...like you let the spoon rest in your mouth and you feel it on your tongue, you feel it dissolving into you...and you look at the other diners and they're just going on eating...never sharing the same taste that you are devouring.

A bit of silence and he thought the music was muted and that he might have actually heard the hand of a clock moving.

devouring is an interesting term she said...writing some jotted words on some neatly lined notebook.

He paused a few moments...wondering if there was Pete Yorn Pandora station and what song would play if he found it.

I chose devouring because it was visceral.  It was engaging.  Like when you carve a Halloween pumpkin and you pull out all the pulp and there are a few stragglers of pulp and you have to take a large spoon and scrape the insides so that you remove every piece...she was like that spoon...I was the pulp...she scraped the foundations...the roots of me...she tugged and pulled them and ripped them from me until they were exposed.  They were hers.

She wrote a few more words in the notebook. 

She could have done anything with me that she wanted.  He mumbled.

I'm sorry, what was that?

Nothing...I just was saying she did that.

Okay.  More jottings.

You mentioned her like a color.  What color...if you could use the standard color palette would you say she was?

That is easy.  Unfortunately I'd have to say brown.

Brown?

Yeah...brown...a color of mixtures.  Not a primary one...not one you'll paint your car...rather a color that is constantly changing. 

Changing?  How so?

You've seen the color of riverbanks...the color of river beds beneath crystal clear streams...the color of earth, the color of bourbon still melting from ice...it is a brown but it is elastic...it changes...it heats up and becomes darker when we are in a candle-lit room together...it is lighter when we are in the daylight and she tells me she doesn't want to see me....it just changes.

More writing.

There was a lot in that sentence.  That last part...when she tells you she doesn't want to see you...what do you mean?

What do I mean?  It's pretty simple.  It's extinguishing.  Lick your thumb and forefinger and snuff the flame.  It's like a candle going out.  It's there and then it's not.  It's not hard.

I realize that...did she say that?

The clock, if there is one, is ticking away and it must be about a minute.  Maybe two.

Yes.  She did.

The music is light and airy.  The talk is about break-ups and broken eggs, things that cannot be put back together.  Destruction. 

And how did you feel about that?

The tiles were diagonal across the ceiling, he noticed.  There were patterns and shapes and things that fit.  Grooves that fit into each other.  No gaps.  Perfectly aligned.

I felt like I was torn in two.

Literally?

Yeah he mumbled...thinking about the removal...the chunk of heart taken and snipped.  He thought about the walls that he assembled and mortared...the gaps spackled over...the rooms in his mind repainted...colors changed...yet everywhere he went there was the dirt...the earth...the drink and the reminder.

Yeah.  Amputation.  A part cut off...and you know what they say...that phantom limb syndrome...they can still feel the missing leg or arm.  I just felt that missing piece of me but it wasn't a leg...he mumbled...it was more destructive.

I'm sorry...I missed that last part.

Forget it.

There was a song playing but all he could hear was her writing. 

Well I think this was a good first session.

You do?  What did you learn?  Because I sure as fuck just felt like I basically took a knife, slotted it into my stomach and spilled some things onto your floor while you wrote tiny notes in a book...one of us is bleeding...and one of us is reading.

She put the pen down.  He opened his eyes and moved on the couch until he was sitting up.  He felt the very first notes of anger...of frustration and a bit of pain...she took off her glasses and regarded him.

I'm sorry if you feel that way...I'm trying to learn you and with that learning I think I can help you.

Help me?

Yes...help you.

Like how.

Like maybe forget her.

He sat back, almost as if hit.  Almost as if she had stabbed him with that fucking pen. 

Instead he smiled slightly...he crossed his arms and he suddenly had a full realization moment, like when you choose something after debating a menu item.  He knew, in whatever was left in his heart.

Forget?  Forget?  That's like asking me to forget how to breathe...how to sleep...how to perform every basic function I do as a machine...then to go further...to forget how to write, how to speak English...to drive.  Your idea is to remove a part of me that is as much of my soul as every prayer I've ever said...every confession I've made.  You think excising it is like removing a stain...but I remind you that she is a color I find on me...a muscle I use...a word I find to struggle to mumble when I need to use the strongest one...she is a reminder...a thief of my parts and my moments...stealing my thoughts and invading my words...she is...of all the things she is..unforgettable.

There were more writings in books but at that point he had stood up and stolen across the room.  The door shutting was a good feeling to him.

The Snippets

It is maddening.

It is aggravating.  Disturbing, irreconcilable...unfinished...left undone.

Snatched away, god damn it was just getting good.

A piece, a tiny small piece...a fragment of a wedge.  The almost handful size of it...

The smallest interaction of you that is allowed in a day.

The snippet of you that you give to me...and that I can cup and drink from, slipping through my fingers and spilling away.  Disappeared. 

Gone.

Until it happens again.  So briefly.

But it leaves a bruise...that I can softly rub and remember where you hit me.  With just the calmest and unmistakable sound of your voice and I let it fall upon me and make an impact.

All done by a snippet of time that I can be with you.

Summer Rain

I genuinely appreciate the moments in the evening, when the drink starts to erode those protective walls that keep a thought of you from penetrating the sweet vulnerable parts of me that are defenseless and splayed out for you to sweep in and carry away.

My head above such waters...immersed in a sea of you.  Warm, salt of the ocean of you, I can taste you in my mouth as I drift, slowly down a current that is the same pace as your heart beat.

Or slowly, like if you were asleep...your heart barely beating, resting as you lay comfortably...you envelope me like a syrup, sticky sweet and sugary, caught in your nectar, pulling on my limbs slowly as you drip into my mouth and my awaiting tongue.

A road with you...a spell...down a stolen highway that leads into a storm that has just passed...a summer rain colliding with an end of the day so the colors are dying and I can hear the stones beneath my feet and I can feel the brief clutch of your hand and the sometimes graze of your shoulder.  Small talk, patter...nothing of consequence, just a small feeling that we are in a solo space, confined by two...a remarkable prison that I wish to never depart, a peace that I find so very fleeting...a sense of capture, of the remarkable.  Each step better than the last, each step seemingly even more earnest and knowing that I don't care where the road ultimately ends.

And perhaps we will be together when the first star hangs itself in the sky...just a piece to beckon, the way you can catch my eye in a sea of people, a crowd of others...I can always find you, find the shape, the stance, the bit of you that is so easy to discern...the first bright reflective stone of you that mirrors my eye. 

Or maybe it will be a summer moon, orange and full that explodes into the horizon. 

Or the last bit of red wine once you know you've had your fill.  But will have that last colorful sip.

Bourbon sliding slowly down the side of glass as you replace it on your nightstand.  Perhaps there is just a bit left that you look at...wonder if it's enough of the trouble.  That will be me...worth the spill into your throat.  The last bit before a night's sleep.

Be on a first name basis when you experience joy, you throttle careening rapture and you want to close your eyes and maybe if you let your lips escape a name then and only then should it be mine.

But ultimately it's much more languid...much more serene.  Rather it is the disruptive sense of summer rain, intruding, perhaps dampening a day...until you realize that it is a sound that is soothing, a noise that has no equal...it is in your eyes and in your hair and it is upon you so suddenly and unexpected and you are filled with it, drenched in it, no escaping or evading and as you find a quiet and warming place you are still dripping with it, finding it upon you...

That.

That is what you do to me.

Gwaltney Corner near Carsley, Eveningtide

It was near evening and the house was quiet downstairs.  Outside was the color of nickel, a storm nibbling the edges of the evening and while no rain had fallen it was harkening.  The front screen door stirred slightly, bumping against the door jamb as a random gust would shudder.  The floor creaked above as he heard her footfalls and the plumbing behind the walls grew noisy as she started her bath.  He was alone in the kitchen, the heart of the home.  It was too early to be drinking bourbon but with her it's what she drank in the tub so he was having some now, the ice winnowing down into little slices in the amber liquid.  He swirled it a bit, listening to the hum of the refrigerator, imagining her as a young child sitting near by.  Or swinging open the front porch screen, announcing the start of the rain.  He drained his glass and stood up to go to the refrigerator. He opened the freezer door, pulled out a handful of ice and poured himself a double.  

He picked up the handful of papers on the table, typed passages from an actual typewriter, the top page with a still-wet ring from where the bourbon glass had stained it.  He had attempted, perhaps poorly, to find some words...words from others, that he could share with her, that he could read to her, and perhaps let the letters from another come from his mouth to her ear and maybe sound pleasing and impactful to her mind.  

He heard the wood floors creaking and he took to the stairs where they groaned a little under his weight.  

Ascending he looked out the window across the farm, where he finally heard a little growl of thunder, still far off and no lightning.  The dark trees slightly melted into a sky still lighter than black but graying quickly.   

As he neared the bathroom door he heard the faint sounds of a trumpet...Chris Botti was playing off of her phone in the background...the water was still flowing into the tub and she had the light on in the bedroom but not the bathroom so it was soothing.  He knocked slightly on the door, a tiny slit of view showing as it wasn't completely shut.

Hey, before you come in could you please bring up the bottle and some ice?

He smiled, said yes and retreated downstairs.

 

Minutes later, he was sitting on a stool slightly behind her...she was immersed up to her neck in the long tub, white and gray bubbles making it completely opaque...her brightly lit toes sticking up at the end and her arm piercing up with the glass in its hand.  

Chris Botti was still playing...a slow and low tune across the room.  Outside was now dark, and a few sprigs of fireflies appeared, but then again so did a Kodak flash of lightning now and again.

So where was I? he asked.

You were about to read me something from Stephen King, which I was saying isn't probably very romantic or anything...her voice was low like the trumpet music, but it was because she was relaxed.  She took a sip of her drink and he shuffled his pages around a little bit.  Found what he was looking for and started reading... 

“The most important things are the hardest to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them — words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they’re brought out. But it’s more than that, isn’t it? The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried, like landmarks to a treasure your enemies would love to steal away. And you may make revelations that cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny way, not understanding what you’ve said at all, or why you thought it was so important that you almost cried while you were saying it. That’s the worst, I think. When the secret stays locked within not for want of a teller but for want of an understanding ear.” Stephen King, Different Seasons 

 He wrote that?  She took another sip...the longest parts of her hair floated slightly on the water, gently curling them.  The water was growing a little more transparent, just the music and the evening flickering outside.

He did. 

Hmmm, she murmured into her glass.  He shuffled his papers looking for the next thing to read...I liked that, she said.

So he pulled out the John Green passage…uhm, this one isn’t the most applicable but I liked it, particularly because of some of the imagery.   She pulled her feet down and they disappeared under the water.  She reached up and turned the hot water spigot.  Starting to lose some of the heat, she said.  Well read it to me.

So he did:

“I wanted so badly to lie down next to her on the couch, to wrap my arms around her and sleep. Not fuck, like in those movies. Not even have sex. Just sleep together in the most innocent sense of the phrase. But I lacked the courage and she had a boyfriend and I was gawky and she was gorgeous and I was hopelessly boring and she was endlessly fascinating. So I walked back to my room and collapsed on the bottom bunk, thinking that if people were rain, I was drizzle and she was hurricane.” ― John Green, Looking for Alaska

 

It was quiet.

The drip of the water made a surprisingly large noise. 

I don’t know about that one…it feels like it was more of younger self.  Maybe not current day.

Not current day?

Yeah, like something written in the past about early days…but…not today.  Not tonight.

He nodded, knowing she couldn’t see him from behind her, but also agreed.

Yeah, but I liked the rain reference.

You always did.

I do.  Okay, let me see if this next one works…

Go ahead.  Try me. 

“It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for, and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing.

It doesn’t interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dream, for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn’t interest me what planets are squaring your moon. I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life’s betrayals or have become shriveled and closed from fear of further pain! I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it or fade it, or fix it.

I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own, if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, to be realistic, to remember the limitations of being human.

It doesn’t interest me if the story you are telling me is true. I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself; if you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul; if you can be faithless and therefore trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see beauty even when it’s not pretty, every day,and if you can source your own life from its presence.

I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine, and still stand on the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, “Yes!”

It doesn’t interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up, after the night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone, and do what needs to be done to feed the children.

It doesn’t interest me who you know or how you came to be here. I want to know if you will stand in the center of the fire with me and not shrink back.

It doesn’t interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains you, from the inside, when all else falls away.

I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.”

― Oriah Mountain Dreamer, The Invitation  

Outside it had started to rain…that slow syncopation of random raindrops…perhaps a blink of lightning and the answering thunder letting them know the storm was upon them.  They both sat quietly, the outside collapsing but inside the air steamy and warm.  They felt like it was one of those empty moments he had just spoken about…and the company they were now keeping. 

You know I wrote you something, she quietly allowed. 

You did?

Yeah, I just don’t really want to show it to you. And I need more drink.  He picked up the bottle and grabbed some ice and walked over to her outstretched arm with the glass held up.  The bubbles were fading and he could see the outline of her…and it stirred a bit of him, the sweet shape diffused under the water.  He marveled at the mirrored slope from the bottom of her rib cage to her hip bones, a dainty angle.  Her skin looked like pearl beneath the soapy water.

I would love to read it…

I don’t know.  She lifted her glass to drink.  He moved back to the chair so he wouldn’t seem hovering.  He just stayed quiet, letting the music play and the rain keep up.  He knew this was her debate. 

After a bit, she said bring me my phone. 

He got up to go over to the phone, turning off the music and bringing it to her with a hand towel to dry her hand.  She thanked him, turning in the tub so she could grab the phone and open the Notes page.  She stared at it, re-reading it first, making a final determination.  Okay.  Here.

He started with the opening words…and read slowly.

It was a reveal.  It was exposure.  Insight and opening up to the syntax of her mind…he read descriptions and emotions.  Tone and environment.  It was an autobiography of an evening, her evening and her words and the way she was feeling.  Because of him.  It was a paragraph and it was the longest she had ever shared and it was raining harder outside and she was naked beneath him, a drink in her hand and his last words still echoing in the small room hovering with the steam of the bath. 

That was something worth reading…that was something way worth sharing. 

She turned in the tub to see him.  Her dark eyes were visible and she wasn’t smiling but she was questioning him with them.  Do you really think so?  It isn’t…you know…stupid?

He let out a slight laugh.  God no…it was exceptional. 

A particularly close lightning strike and then a brief flash and the lights went out.  They were in perfect darkness, and he could hear her stirring in the water. 

Please don’t move he started…don’t try to get out.

I’m not.  I’m making room…. He heard her sit up, the water dripping off of her, a shadow of her body against the white tub. 

He unbuckled his jeans and pulled off his shirt, delicately stepping into the water which was still warm and smelling slightly of her.  She was there to greet him.

I mean it.  Exceptional he said again.

She kissed him, quiet and gently. 

Well I’m glad you liked it.

 

The electricity came on much later, they were already entangled in the sheets, hair askew and their cheeks brightened.  The sudden light in the room made them laugh, and they fell asleep quickly, the night fallen and the moon now high over Carsley.

 

 

Voice Mail

He dialed the numbers from memory...a still fine and perfectly etched set of numbers in his mind that may as well have been the combination to some lock in his brain...it was unforgettable.

He listened to the expected tones of ringing, never expecting her to pick up...and when she didn't and her soft bit of southern-voice started speaking in her voice message he inhaled slightly...like he could breath her in from the distance...

"Hey he started, walking around so that his words flowed naturally and fluidly...like he just had a thought and decided to call...which was of course not true.  She permeated him, his thoughts, his mind, and she saturated him, her memory, her mind and in this morning she was a presence, a weight and he wanted to tell her that...wanted to explain how it enveloped him like a shawl, like a warming cloth that was placed on his neck, soothing, tender.  She was in his bones, well past his head, and he had a tremendous absence that he knew she might be able to replace...even if it was just her voice...even if it was just the ghost speak of an outgoing voice message.  Because even that soft dulcet song of her name and her brief words of being unable to answer the call were enough for him to drink in and continue...enough of a snippet to find him home.  Enough of a noise to pierce his ear and let her fall into his brain and spread slowly against his thoughts. 

She was on his mind this morning...unusually so...and he wanted to share that with her.

I just wanted to say that I was thinking of you.

He hung up.

Almost Summer

Summer was coming…

One could almost feel a glimpse of it in certain afternoons…when the air blew warm and enough green was in the trees to make it feel like it was almost there.

The summer when her hair would curl and she would shower and leave it wet…the tendrils darker than when dry…the scent of soap and scubbed skin still high on her.  He had enveloped her in these moments, crushed her against him, inhaled her and felt the skin upon skin.  When they slightly separated she had left a small wet skim of her against him.

The summer when the storms would darken and cool the air in a violence and then depart suddenly.  Her brief and wonderful interludes with him.

And as he drove home through rain and yellow lights it was washing it away…cold memories.  He wanted the heat of her, the warmth.  The clench.

The summer when a day began with her and an evening slowly ended with her.  There were more moments together…summer days were longer.  Summer days lingered.

In the fast and vast humidity he tasted the salt on the neck, the sugar in her kiss…he wiped away a bead of sweat and watched her chest rise and fall.

The summer was darkened rooms and cool white sheets, the color of snow, the brief reminder of winter until she lay next to him and it was summer again.

The summer when the grass was wet with morning humidity, and you left footprints on the sidewalk.  Her in just his shirt,  barely buttoned, the outline of her hard to detect but the legs were tanned and the color of darkened sand.  Her brief walk to the door.  The padding of her walk across the floor.  Summer was the barefoot walk of the barely clothed.

The summer was new moons, waning…adding light to each day. 

Her simple voice a color to him, adding layers to the light…scented drops in his ear.  Warm, honey soft and colored, barely stirring.  But there.

The summer was a collision of days and nights, with no calendar but rather a sensation of moments and times that blurred and weaved in and out of his memory like the blink and heights of fireflies, signaling and rising in an evening.  Summer was the capture in a mason jar.

The summer was the low warm river at an ebb, smooth warm sand beneath…light reflecting and kaleidoscoping and occasionally you would find a shell, a beautiful pale one that you would store and keep.  You would pull it out in winter, to fold in your hand and remember the water as you plucked it from the river bed and made a reminder out of it.

She was like that…that beautiful pale piece of summer that you tried to hold in your hand and when he looked at it now it was empty.