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.

Plucked

 

Goddamn have I missed you.

Not in a distance or sequence kind of way...but in a lost-limb type of absence...a bottom of a glass reaction to a memory that had once filled it completely.  

I breathe you in, the scent of a city in its sweat-stained summer'd past, with the first tendrils of Fall starting to spill into the mornings, a coolness along the avenues that rides on breezes that brush past you like strangers on a sidewalk.

I taste you, the air of you...the inhalation of streets and windows where pasta boils on a stove and street-vendors mix concoctions and the mix of scents is distinctly yours...

I remember a tub, filled to the brim with warming waters...a delicate step into it and a leg sliding past the surface...a spill of water onto the tile as I joined...the skin upon skin and the steam blurring your face slightly and your hair turning darker in the water...the tendrils turning like leaves in the Fall.

I remember the faces of strangers, figures and stares, laughter and aloofness...worries and doubt at times, complete joy at times...a mix, a cacophony of noises and reactions to a city with labored breathing.

I try but completely fail at conjuring up you in my mind...I cannot quite get the fullness of you in person, the sound of your quiet voice, the darkness of your eyes, the warmth from just being in the same place as you, the pull of gravity keeping me from looming over you, the ache of a distance and the memory failing to remember, to replace...so I get pieces, shards and fragments that pierce my memory and I gather them like a puzzle pushed onto the floor, disconnected and misshaped.   

Until I see you again.

And then, as if I am plucked from the very part of where I was I return.  We return.

And the parts of me that fit the parts of you find themselves familiar again.

And surrounded by millions of people we don't even notice them.  Because you are enough for me to capture and keep in a singular lens, plucked from the others to rest my gaze and fold into me.