Love Letter

There is an antique store near old highway 20 and the intersection where all that construction is taking place...you know the one.

Inside in the dusty musk and Coca-Cola sign replicants there is a wall, with frames across it like a museum...varying sizes, shapes and even the wood colors are different.  But inside each is a page from a love letter...the paper turning the color of sand, the ink fading in parts...but goddamn, the words...

The words...

"If I never loved again it is because you were the completest part of me, the skeletal part of me that allowed me to walk this earth, roam an afternoon and be free unlike any time by myself..."

"I close my eyes hurrying myself to sleep, begging and praying for just the slightest chance or even slight perception that I might catch nary a glimpse of you"

"I am far, the furthest I have ever been...closer seemingly to the sun and stars...I see them much brighter now and in the vast amount of darkness and night I cannot believe how ugly they appear when I make the comparison of your countenance...you eclipse even what God has so studiously made."

"I no longer pray for my safe return...I fear it is a faithless prayer and one deemed selfish and willful.  Rather...in any way or capacity, I long to return to you in one form or another...a cold dead man, a wounded hurt person or even a ghost who can occasionally peek and see you...just even briefly...slightly...that is what I now pray for and I feel more comforted...more alive in the hope that that is something the Divine can provide more realistically...and to my benefit."

"I will always seek you in these new crowds, a hint of your sculpture, a color similar in hair...a gait or a gesture remarkable...sometimes it is even a voice, and at other times it is a piano.  I see you in the passers-by, I see you in the puddled streets of rain...I see you in the most common things that are comforting and held in my hands...and maybe I will ultimately find you amongst all the things that remind me of you so that you truly and actually are there."

"I watched two lovers pass by...one could tell...the slight angles towards each other...the casual laughs...the belonging.  I think it is the sense of belonging that binds them that reveals their truest emotion...it is comfort...fitting...key into lock, candle to match...they were useful to each other...making a completely separate one whole...one could tell just by watching them walk.  O I do wish that is how we appear when we glide"

"I don't have a lot of time and am in need of additional ink that I will strive to find upon the next town...it is cold and it is quiet..but in my heart it is emblazoned and beating to a rhythm that I might be dancing...it is the only time because I can stop and provide thoughts to you and my pen quivers because it will do no justice...rather it will be a letter but to me it is fire...it is a glow...it is hot coals and it is warming and I wish I could pen you longer"

"I didn't say I love you enough..not near enough...breakfast, afternoon...I didn't take the time to convey what I was feeling when I awakened and when I closed my eyes...that single rapture presence that you provided and I fear I could return soon and still be in a deficit...so I will try to say I love you a thousand times a day and hope that a wind will pick them up and maybe make its way to you so that when I return I am halfway to telling you that I love you"

"I hear murmurs of a battle tomorrow...I will do my very best and fight alongside some of the bravest men I have ever known...but I will carry your name on my lips and even if light extinguishes in me the very last sound I will utter, with the very last breath in my chest...will be my love for you."

"You have ruined me for love...you have marked me and made me unworthy of anyone else...I will not be able to administer even the slightest affection for even the most sought-after debutante...I am penned and anointed to be yours...even if you dispel me.  Even if shunned I would be forced to walk the earth like Mosley's chains in Dickens with a spell of you upon me...nobody could ever accept me because I would always have you alongside, even if only in my mind...the two of us forever entwined...and no other would be able to bear the crowd of us...you, me...them.  Your ruination is the best thing that has ever happened to me."

I only wish I could convey like those departed souls could correspond.

Folly Beach

It was the sea air that he noticed...in the very early morning near the pier.  Even this late in the year, when most of the leaves were starting to turn up north the sea smelled like summer, not loosening up its grip on the warmth and the sun still waiting to rise above the slick black oil ink of the Atlantic.

She was near...it was one of those intuitions of proximity...like sometimes how the air would change before a thunderstorm.  She was like that at times...exploding in his head and deluging his thoughts with just a constant...her.  Her.

Her. 

As he watched the brief quickening of orange scratching away the morning's dark, he felt her more than anything else.  Like a locket around his neck.  It wasn't heavy...rather it was quite light...but he felt it as surely as if she had placed it there.

His car was illegally parked right at the tide line...thankfully it was going out and the engine still ticked from the long drive in the evening. 

He wasn't going to her...rather he just wanted to be close enough to feel...a moon to her planet...a gravitational pull...proximity. 

He actually wanted to just drive by where she might be staying, driving slowly enough that she might look up, might glance...and across the fifty feet or so she might widen her eyes in surprise and wonder...but not really believe.  And go back to her doings.

He was an interruption while she played like music in the background.  A soft relaxing song that he could hear without repetition.  He sometimes broke things and then used them clumsily. 

He wanted to cook for her, break into the kitchen at this ungodly hour and awaken her with smells of bacon and coffee...watch her bed-head hair emerge and greet him like a sunrise.

She was like that, actually as he watched a real one emerge and beckon the clouds to slowly dissipate and start spreading shades the color of warmth across the East.

She was the start of his day...no matter where she was...east, west.

She was the emergence of something warm and far away...beautiful but almost out of reach...he rose out of bed with her out there and him knowing that was her...a presence.  A morning...a fresh start, a new clock...

He didn't know when she would actually awaken...he hoped it would be when the sun was slightly higher so he waited, watching the shade pull up on the day...half expecting the local police to shoo him from his spot and hand him a hefty fine.

But for now the morning was his alone...alone on the beach and for all he could see alone in the world.
Except he knew she was close.
And as he watched the orange circle start its rise he knew that even if she was across the opposite of where he was, hundreds or thousands of miles away,

he would feel the lure of her...the pull.  The tide tugging you into the ocean, towards something beautiful.

4 Roads out of Wakefield

He was driving down Route 460, the long leg of the widest road headed southeast out of Petersburg, where the dark path of the evening was interrupted occasionally by a few deep southern small towns...Disputanta...Waverly...part of the three cities named by General Mahone that included Wakefield which was his marker tonight...his last place to arrive.

It was the first weekend of fall, the evening still struggling to let go of summer.  Warm ocean-tinted air flew into the windows and he kept the windows down...and the radio up, blaring Amos Lee on a satellite radio station.  She was interwoven into his thoughts as deeply as the humidity clogged the air, impossible to separate and irresistible to worry.

A smattering of headlights from the opposing way illuminated now and again...but mostly he had the road alone to himself.

He was driving to apologize.

To walk up to her, perhaps reach out and grab a hand...maybe both...and just utter his repentance.

Pluck words and more words like slivers stuck in her heart and extract them...one by one.  Set them aside and burn them later.  Kiss the little holes they left and stop any bleeding. 

He pushed the car a little faster.

Wakefield straddles 460 in an almost pentagon shaped county way, with route 603 heading due south towards the Big Woods Wildlife area...and routes 603 and 617 heading north towards the James River.  He had never spent enough time down there to truly drive around and notice the names and the numbers...but 460 had always kept him company. 

Well...she did too.

She was as uncomplicated as the tides on the James River...she came, she went...she moved when the moon was closer...but she sometimes kept him in her shallows...not really allowing him to plumb her depths that he knew were there...as deep as the drop off as the ledge when the James met the Atlantic out past Hampton.

Lights from a far off ship...that's what he sometimes called her.  He knew she was there, far...and he could detect the faintest sign...

But unlike the horizontal metals of an ocean-bound freighter she was more nuanced with curves and angles, she shimmered like the thousand-dimes ocean top, she laughed in a deeply southern silk, and she let her bourbon-colored eyes get him drunk with infatuation. 

Smitten.  It was a good word...and as a few night bugs painted his windshield, drawn by the stark illumination of his headlights he vaguely empathized as he knew what it was like to chase such bright and beautiful objects.

He sliced through the evening wondering what she was doing...what she was wearing...he had called her and told her he was coming...she had been neutral...a Switzerland in this deep state of Virginia this evening. 

It was like he had hit his thumb with a hammer...it was a miscue.  A misstep.  He had worked all his life to master words with his mouth and his pen...and he wielded them at times like a razor.  Carelessly. 

And he had cut her.

He hoped not too deeply.  Not too scarring.  But enough to draw blood, maybe more than when a splinter gets pulled out roughly.

He simply hoped that his rough hewn words could be soothed over....generally the way she had soothed his own tiny spurs. 

The air smelled faintly of a dinner and he realized he was coming upon the diner at the edge of Wakefield...a parking lot filled with comfort food seekers and people content in an evening with each other.

He knew her place was coming up in a bit and shifted in his seat. 

He hoped he could content her this evening just as well.

The Sway

He loved watching her walk.

Quite often he was more punctual than her...and she was often quite late...but that was okay because he could find a vantage point, a view...a perch to allow himself one of the great gaits he had ever seen.

Her walking towards him was like a sunrise...a golden moment that was filled with possibilities and warmth...a stolen, delicate and fleeting time that took her from her distance to him.  It was a movie, with those old black and white still photos that you flipped in your hand and the character moved in stop-motion...Her walk to him was the first sounds of a favorite song...one memorized for years...permanent imprint...you moved your mouth to the words unconsciously...like the way his mouth moved anticipating her song on his lips.

Her hips swayed like a girl in a Tom Petty song...she clearly had movement...like a fingerprint to him that was so unique to her...he could see it in his sleep if lucky enough...one time at an airport a sign had kept him from any angle above her shoulders and he knew it was her walking towards him.  It was that ingrained...primeval...pure and maybe even reincarnate. 

It was subtle...slight...just enough movement to be noticeable to someone paying enough attention...it was catwalk sure and comfortable in her own skin...whether in heels or flats...tall or taller...and he loved it mostly when she arrived and the first thing she did was remove her shoes. 

It wasn't the last thing removed, but the shoes tended to be the very first.

Her walk towards was foreplay...her walk away was depression. 

He hated watching her go, for a billion reasons...but if nothing else he did get to watch her walk...even if going away for him for a bit.

It just meant she would be walking towards him next time.

Lazy Sunday

Later in that day they were slicing through the green waters in a kayak, and with only one paddle he was doing most of the work but the tide was coming in so it was an easy plow...the salt air was warm and there was a gathering of darkening clouds looming but no thunder yet...an evening storm would be the perfect coda to the day.

Earlier than that they were at the beach bar, a kitschy open-air place with hardly any variety but they had margaritas in plastic white cups, the rims lined with heavy salt.  She had tried the ceviche and loved it....he mostly ate the chips and what the natives passed around as salsa.  But the beach was nearly deserted and for a few moments it felt like it was their island...their views, the breezes and the scent of the bloom of the flowers in the trees surrounding the property.  After a couple of margaritas he knew he needed to either go kayaking or go back to bed.  She suggested the kayaking.

She let one of her hands trail in the water as they went, and he noticed her opal colored fingernail polish...it looked perfect on her...as did the red bottoms of her suit...it had moved slightly down and he saw the whiter part of her where the suit covered her normally...and the tan line was perfect...the contrast on her skin...she asked if he was looking at her ass and he had to confirm it.  She laughed and pulled up on the suit.

Even earlier she wasn't wearing a bathing suit at all.

In an evening that was a blur of words and bodies and music playing in the smaller room of the suite they had entangled and intertwined...burned the way a wick burns...the windows of the suite were open and outside there was no storm but there were winds and the scent of the evening ocean.

But that morning, upon waking, they were at different sides of the bed...in the slight movements of detecting her rousing he moved towards her...the sheets were still warm with sleep, her hair was tussled and beautiful and she still smelled slightly of perfume.  He found her arms opening and he got closer, feeling her beneath him, skin on skin...tanned and untanned parts.

Once upon each other they just laid there...even falling asleep for a little bit more.  Three hours later, after some room service in robes they were back again, just lounging in the luxury of a room with no clocks and nothing to do.

Until she suggested lunch and kayaking...and the return of clothes and others on a lazy Sunday.

The Smallest Things

Tiny, impossibly tiny billions of things...

The sun caught behind a tree like a fish in a net, the early morning still heavy in the air...

The crush of taillights on a black strip of pavement, everybody heading to other people mostly...but some possibly alone.

An elevator, empty. 

An airplane, scrapping white against the afternoon sky, the blue scribbled with fading trails of previous flights...

The first few turning leaves abandoning color to slowly crumple.

Many times it is a song...either shared or just a reminder.

Waiting in line for a sandwich...the primal need to eat...hunger.  Hunger is one that triggers many explosive thoughts...the same craving...taste-reminders...

A phone lifted to find a text...a few words in the ether that represent such a small portion of an exchange...

A mirror...time spent fixing lips and hair.

Sounds...sirens and horns...street lights...cities.

A window of an airplane, a tiny square with the world unfolding beneath...bringing me. 

A flower through a sidewalk...beauty in the incongruent...a bit of color against a pale canvass...

You...the billions of things that I see that remind me of you...

Oxygen

What she didn't know was after a kiss, when they retreated briefly to find each other's eyes and find the iris and study the dark colors is he would breathe in very lightly, like hoping to pull even more of her into him, like her essence, like her air, like her exhalations that could be just one more thing, one more piece, one more part of her that he could consume.

And it could be only in those moments, in that proximity...that sacred air that he could pretend.

Phone lines and email...like bottled air...like those pneumatic tubes used in bank deposits...put your money and deposit slip in and it whooshed away from you to some mysterious vault and be returned with a receipt....just the to's and fro's of a day or a week of distance...

Like reverse CPR...somebody is not breathing into you but rather drawing your breath out and it is a cold and far away feeling. 

Drowning...being away from her was drowning...like watching someone just beneath the surface...that was him...he couldn't find the air...and maybe above him she was watching, unable to help.

That cold, cold distance was a pollutant...a fog.  An air uninhabitable for long...the death zone on Everest...being apart was that space...outer space...airless, without oxygen.

Breathing became a chore...work became a dungeon...a tightened collar. 

No wonder the heart and the lungs remain so close in proximity...they feed off each other, turn blood red from blue...become dependent.

She had smash-grabbed his heart long ago...pummeled the outside glass, reached in with robber's gloves and clenched it in a victory grasp.  So know he needed her to breathe as well...to sustain. 

And in absences he weakened...sickened....his fine heart beating bravely in her clutch...

And only in her return, her proximity, her mouth upon his would she provide the restorative breath that would re-awaken him...return him from his pieces...revive him and remind him of the very oxygen that she had become.