Remnants of Hurricanes

This reminds me of you....he said...it was in the gloaming of an evening showering blondes and yellows from a faint sun obscured by clouds and rain...the sky was fantastic.  The air was filled with the pulse of rain and wind that drove both colorless drops and colorful leaves in scattering downpours.

The trees lilted and piroutted and shed tiny bits, seemingly moving in unison then randomly. 

Why? she replied.

Well...first of all, being named after a hurricane would be pretty awesome...as the skies collected the remnants of Patricia and strew them across the horizon....but I think the thing that I was sort of intimating isn't the power, or the fury...or any devastation--

-Well that's thoughtful--

Let me finish...it is in the aftermath...it is the scrubbed clean air...it's like the day was freshly washed...it is--

So I'm an exfoliant?

Christ would you let me finish?  No.  I can find that in a drugstore...you're way rarer.  

Well...thank you.

But it is the calming impact of an afterwards....like violence then calm, like wind then nothing...but there is clearly evidence.

Evidence?

Like something has happened...something has changed.  

Like what?

Like...like me...like when you walk by you strip me of my senses....maybe briefly, but you dust away my current thoughts...you scatter my immediate concern...you dissipate my worries...maybe just for a second but you leave me with  nothing but a very clear and unfiltered view of you and I find that amazing.

She paused, head down.  Maybe that's how you should've started this conversation.
 

 

Invoke an Absence

The shape of her is fingerprinted in his mind...the way she walks, the way her head turns and allows the slope of hair to glide and fall against her.  The way her eyes move from the ground to high-beam into him, sometimes the tiniest...

tiniest pull of the line of her lips into a sad smile.  A clench.  Wry.

If like him she lets something break inside that spills warm...chest-high, acetylene-pure and a little remorseful...because breaking something should hurt.

And you would figure over time that the little parts would ossify, they'd harden like a fossil, rust even.

No.  These remain vivid...blood-red and body temperature right...never exhausted, never worn out.  These tiny bits that remain...like the parts of a bullet left inside a body, in-extricated, spread out in some random pattern.  Just below the skin.

You would think that in the absence there could never be such presence.

That in the fall colors it would be a gray spot...a morning fog color due to just time doing its slow acid drip on memory so razor thin it is now barely reminiscent.

But not her, and her way about him...she lay inside of him, encapsulated in tiny crystalline capsules of memories....built over time and built over effort.

And the ironic effect that every time he saw her, or perhaps even less...thought of her...

another one burst inside of him and was very soon and quickly....

tidily, efficiently and perhaps more than a tad magically...

became replaced by a fresh and brand new one.

Share...don't share...don't care

It is amusing at the parts of you that you allow to merely wash down the drain.

Bits of you....pieces.  You cut away parts and let them get mixed in the downstream.  Parts that once clung to you...were a part of you.  Just nicked away, sliced, cut, shaven. 

Why would I then, feel like that was not a habit?  Why would I have entitlement to being different.

In the revealings it was not so surgical...it was actually quite methodical.  Like a child plowing through a pop-up book, turning the page and moving the parts and watching it grow and reveal...and not being able to wait to turn to the next one...and the next one.

A favorite movie where you cannot wait for the great scene.
A song where the riff is contagious.

A food that you crave...either making or ideally somebody well-heeled serving it to you...bringing it to you.

Discovery.  Unexpected.  Delighted. 

That was you...to me.

The Willy Wonka reveal of you to a part of me that found myself in the shade of you...everything making a collage of colors and tastes...and each one more perfect than the previous one on my tongue.

I found so many locked doors in you.  But at times they were opened.

Once and again...in awhile.  And the rooms behind them were so spectacular....standing in a hallway of dark stained floors and low-dimmed lights...finding rooms of candles and neon...colors I had never imagined....these discoveries of you that you let me find occasionally.

Occasionally.

You were like learning a new language...there was familiarity but not quite exact.  But as uncomfortable as it was to learn a new tongue, I knew I could ultimately convey what I was trying to say.

You knew.

As much as I didn't, I think the biggest part was that you knew.

I revealed more.

I explored, and prodded...and went around the back-way where the weeds were tall to find perhaps a hidden entrance I hadn't seen from the front.

Leaving big footprints and broken stalks to mark my efforts...you could track me in your mind and perhaps open and unlock doors at your whim.

And maybe share.  Maybe reveal.

But mostly it was like those slivers of follicles that you sliced every morning, wantonly letting them slip away from you and drift aimlessly into a drain.

They had once been part of you.

And maybe tomorrow some will grow back.

And that is the effort that I undertake. 

God...I Remember

It was a Sunday...maybe it was.

I don't remember much anymore...little details that elude me.  Times...dates...unimportant.  What I do remember though is the proximity...the sense, awareness...like a teenage-dance when bodies softly touch where never touched before.  It sounds trite...god, I know it does...seems pitiful now.

But then?

You were an IV bag hung beside me, dripping slow medicine into me. You were in the bloodstream.  Comforting...curing.  Yeah...you helped fix me.

You were an antidote...a remedy.  You obliterated the bits of me that were snapped...you reconciled and mended.  You binded.  You bandaged.

In a way you became my religion, you became my deity.  You were quite subtlety the power...the beginning of something that I cared to remember.  The start.

I remember...God I remember waiting for you...

In a quiet evening with only headlights and the sound of heels on bricks.

In a picnic with the grass heavy with humidity.

In an evening...backlit with pinks and peaches...in a storm, exploding around and deafening...but folding into each other...

A winter, with just a fire.

It was brazen.  Wanton.  Chemical.  The introduction of you into the awaiting me.  Placating...pulsating...the wary climb onto the top of the highest diving board and the release of the immersion into the water.  You were the libido, the exhale.

Stolen.  A kiss...another.  A touch.  A glimpse.  A pull-back and a stare.

What are you thinking...exactly now.

I remember...God I remember trying to read your mind.

A thick bound leather book...with a lock.  Maybe a time and again when you might open it and pull out a page and let me read it before crumpling it in your hand and hiding it away.

You whispered words...you spoke in tongues.  You invaded quiet silence and broke it with a violence.  A tone.  A reveal.  Exposure...like standing nude before me...not naked...nude because you are art.

You gave in...you released.  You allowed....you offered.

I wanted to keep you for myself...such selfishness knows no bounds.  I coveted...I sinned.

I remember you dressing...God I remember the way you returned to your outside world after sharing your inside one with me.

I drank from your cup...
I took your chalice.

I worshiped you.

I remember worshiping you...God I remember worshiping you.

In a pink and peaches evening I still do.

Mile-markers

He let the engine die and let the ticking of the engine settle as he waited in the driveway.

It had been awhile since he had last seen her...but she had been branded in him in an indelible fashion.  The years were like mere minutes and he felt the slight heat rise inside of him as he anticipated her arrival.  The clenching, anxious moments...what the hell...he needed to just relax.

She pulled open the door to the large beachside home and exited in a blur of white and the scent of sunburn and tanning lotion.  She mouthed the word "hi" and got into the seat of the jeep, pulling a pair of sunglasses off her head and nestling them on her face.  She looked at him...like waiting, like she had just seen him versus last seeing him months ago, and she implored him to start the car and drive.

He did.

The sound of the engine and the uptick in the roar of the wind allowed them to be silent...the noise of traffic, the sound of seabirds....the acceleration to the speed limit left them without a need to fill the void of the silence...only when he stopped at the stoplight was it suddenly quiet.  He could smell the potions of her...it smelled of a summer night, full moons and fireflies.  It was pine, sap, sand and salt. If he would ever find a candle that captured this scent he would fill his house with it.  A breeze lit up and the scent disappeared.  She looked at him through her sunglasses.  Her hair was tousled, a bit disrupted...he had seen that before...just never with her fully clothed.

A Pete Yorn song played on the radio.

He pulled into the Corolla Village Barbecue...the lot was filled and noisy.  He found a place where the jeep would fit, tilting on one side, the crushed shell driveway slightly white against the backdrop of the evening.  He stopped the car, turned the keys off and got out.

Dinner.

Dinner was sublime.  The smoke of the mesquite, the scent of the rub...the hustle of the kitchen.  It was noisy inside, the crush of people and sweet tea balanced on waitresses' trays...they ordered brisket and beans, Coronas and sides of water.  They shouted over music and over patrons...they talked with their hands and every so often their hands collided and it was like a fork stuck into a socket...he almost had to withdraw it just to realize they had touched.

It was if no time had happened...no time had spooled...that her perfect magnetic part of her continued to exist and was the exact polarity that attracted his...nobody wanted to mention it...they just let it sit out on the table like the unused spoon.

At one point she had asked what he was thinking...he shook her off...no need to go there.  This was a dinner...not a date...not something promising...rather, it was just a meal.

They walked out of the restaurant...they jostled slightly against each other in a dangerous glance of bodies that were exceedingly familiar.  Or had at least been once.


On the car ride home, up the main drag, they passed the mile markers heading north.  It was dark, the ocean to the right of them, and now and again a white streak of lightning pierced down.  To the left was the last remnants of sunset.  It was a between time.

It was how he imagined them...between the storm and between something dying...between the thunder and the evening-tide.

She fiddled with the radio, found a song and sat back.

The sky was dark black and burnt orange, depending on the direction.

He pulled into the driveway, where she was staying.

She leaned over, a quick kiss, smelling of barbecue and the salt of an evening...in a minute she was gone.

He was parked so that he could see the Atlantic, and it was dark water with darker skies.  Again a quick bulb of lightning parted the sky and for a moment it made him forget the bit of blackness that was soon to return.

It happened anyways...it always did when she departed.

Sunday evenings...without a you

Time was always a bit of an enemy.

Never too much.  Never together.

He listened to the waning sounds of the saxophone peter out into the mike, the slight breathiness of it as it ended...a few claps from the patrons.  The place was dead...of course it was, being a Sunday evening and a rainy one at that.

He had fled the pour while it was just starting, but heard the rhythm of the rain as it pounded outside...he glimpsed a few in the audience still dripping as they made their escape inside well past him.  He lifted his drink, Angels Envy, and took a long draw.

Sundays sucked.

As much a start of the week as the end of the weekend, he secretly hated them.  His Catholic portion chafed at such a reveal...but it was true.

The new song started and was a bit better...more drum, more bass.  It was a little more melancholy and it fit his mood like the way the wet rain bonded his shirt tighter to his skin.

A few smokers turned the air a bluish hue...it was amazing it was still allowed in some parts...but every rule had its exception.

She had been his.

The one outlier.  The one who had taken a slight step into his world and thrown bright paint against his white walls.  She had turned her sweet eye upon him and intertwined his fingers against hers.  But mostly she had stayed consistently inconsistent.

She had said goodbye in an afternoon that felt like it was mercurial.  But, as he took another sip, it was increasingly permanent.

He hated that.  He wanted a nuclear effervescence...he wanted a barn-fire.  Instead it was a quick and surgical and sterile removal of him from her.

He was the band-aid that had gotten wet, and just became unstuck.

The band had introduced a trumpet, and it brought a noisy cascade to his thoughts....it was not unpleasant, but it was interruptive.

He finished his drink and signaled for another....a double pour with ice in a separate glass.  He could add bits and pieces to mellow the drink.

He had to waken in a few hours...but he debated on staying here with her dust-cloud motes in his mind or staring at the ceiling in the quiet of a hotel room.

He stayed...knowing that each minute would penalize him in the morning...but it was why he figured he'd stay.

He thought randomly of her fingernails...she never painted them except for a pearl colored scheme, and he realized she rarely wore anything other than black or white....

Like the piano keys rumbling nearby.

He wondered in the fleeting moments now that he had opened the unlocked door in his mind and invited the contents to spill on the floor...what she may have been doing...at this moment.  His watch reminded him that she was likely asleep.

He remembered that he had told her, quite often, that she was beautiful.  That she was unique...talented...and struck a chord with him.  That she was discovery...she was vastness.  She was unexplored but when encountered it reminded him of evenings and subtleties...the way music hangs in the air after the last note is played.

She may have listened...it clearly didn't work...didn't matter.

But he knew he had communicated.

It was Sunday...and mostly over.

And he turned to listen to the jazz as it spilled over him, washing away the tiny bits of her that had been exploding into pieces of his brain and it sounded like the rain outside had ended after all and he could soon retreat to the streets outside that were still glistening from the storm.

Sunday Around The Early Part of the A.M.

Perhaps the cup of coffee is warming as you hold it with both hands...the rise of steam slowly awakening as you watch the morning unfold for you...

Perhaps you're close enough to hear the slight spill of waves...there is still a lot of glass to the Atlantic, smooth clear water light enough to see through...likely low tide or at least a calm that feels like the ocean is just starting to stretch.

Perhaps you can only hear the sounds of the gulls...spiraling and starting to descend towards the water.

Perhaps you're still in your sleep-clothes, outside on a private balcony...the early sun not so hot yet but you can tell it will be full-throated and heated later.

Perhaps the inside of the house is still quiet...a peace that rarely is seen once day breaks but a welcome absence...you can have some moments alone, some seconds to stir...perhaps feeling the stress drain slightly from your shoulders as you realize you have many days like this ahead of you this week...no phones, no computers...no work...at least not the usual load.

You taste the coffee and sip slowly, like you could let each moment stretch just a few bits more...elongating...a minute suddenly adding seconds and time becoming the way the sun moves across the sky rather than a minute hand.

That is the way I want to imagine you...in the salt-filled air before the afternoon humidity rolls in...feeling like a fresh sheet of the day has been torn out and tossed into the sky...drifting, untouched...spotless...without a single thought of me to spoil your day.