The heat is like a warm wet blanket and I lay back on the chaise, my eyes closed against the late evening sun.
So it is that I hear the slight movement next to me, the sound of someone settling in next to me.
I sigh, and pull my towel closer in towards me. Damn neighbors, I think, before falling back into my summertime daydream of a hot night with a rockstar.
I hear a loud ping, and I am startled out of my pleasantry. I look beside me, where my neighbor has dropped his keys on the hot pavement.
“Sorry,” he says, sheepishly with a grin that can only be described as boyish. And quite possibly perfect.
I am flustered and feel heat rise in my chest and my neck. “Its okay” i manage to stammer. I watch, dumbfounded as a teenager, as he lays back on his chair with a sigh.
His skin is tan caramel, oiled with sunscreen and glistening iwth a light sheen of sweat that just begs for my my fingernail to trace a line. He is well-muscled and his bicepts call to me. What would it feel like in that embrace?
I try to shake it off, the rising and swelling of interest. I close my eyes but now my fantasy is around my myserious neighbor.
I construct the fantasy.
He bumps into me on the elevator.
I end up finding him in the grocery store.
We join the same club.
It goes on and on. I feel myself begin to stir. I feel the undercurrents of desire. I need to talk with this man.
I have to.
I open my eyes after planning a perfect opening line.
And he is gone.
waking up at all hours, tangled
bedsheets, twisted dreams I
can’t sleep without the dreams and I
can’t stay awake without the sleep.
I am tangled twisted lost in mists and
falling back and forth in time.
Sleeping and waking are one and the same and
I have to wonder is this how I pay for the crime.
I haven’t yet cried but the tears aren’t
too far now
Sheer desperation, demand and desire.
Dreams take me climbing the mountain gets higher
I wake and I’m sweating and breathing comes fast
I wish I could just reach out to the past.
I lost you I leave you I love you I fear
I had you I dropped you I wish you were here.
The dreams are devotions and scream of emotions
that I can’t hold onto but cannot let go.
The thoughts are like ribbons of mist and of haze
the dreams they are haunting me now in the day
I can not explain it I wouldn’t know what to say
But this much I know
I cannot quite let go.
“That was then, this is now” she said, turning her head just a bit to the left, to better hide the surruptious tear that traced her cheek.
“Its me, not you.” She said with a trembling smile. “Really.”
He looked at her with puzzlement in his clear eyes. “But why? Why now?” He asked, the anguish in his voice evident by the tiny tremble at the end of the words.
She shook her head. “I just don’t know. It just has to be that way.”
She puts her hands on his shoulders to console him.
He steps back, forcing her hands to drop.
“You never loved me,” he accuses, his own tears threatening.
“I did,” she implored. “I do. But…”
“But what?” he demanded, anger flushing the delicate skin on his neck red. “Why don’t you just tell me?”
She shook her head sorrowfully, the tears freely falling. “Because I don’t know. I don’t understand myself much less you.”
He frowned at her. He said nothing.
She looked at the ground, her feet, his feet.
She looked at her hands, wringing them together to prevent herself from reaching out to him. The pain of rejection was too much to bear, even when she was rejecting him first.
“You know I love you,” She whispered, looking up into his eyes.
“Yeah right,” he said sarcastically before turning and walking away.
He didn’t look back.
He didn’t see her slump to the ground.
He didn’t hear her sobs.
I am reaching
moving steady muscles rocking in my
legs
Breathing harder with each passing
minute
I feel the lightening in my head
my gut
that signals
the peak
My hands grasp the solidlity
around me and I
moan
unconsciously as I struggle
to reach this
peak
Legs are shaking
Arms tense
Hands curl and relax and curl again
I pull myself closer, embracing
the strength I feel
I am so
almost
there
I breathe quicker in short
gasps
Oxygen is precious here
I feel it
I know its coming
I am almost to the peak
And the alarm goes off
I come awake falling away from the mountain
And I must wait another day
To start the climb again.
Ripe and juicy I can taste the sugary-tart flesh even before my lips meet its sunwashed warmth.
Soft and smooth with a down-like fuzz that brushes against my lips like the wisp of a butterfly wing, sending chills of anticipation down my spine that lay fluttering in my stomach. Rubbing against my cheek, I turn my head into the warm fleshiness, all lush and soft and I long to put my mouth on it. Slowly I inhale the scent of th earth and the sky and the sun, and I close my eyes to better feel the silky softness of the skin.
Eyes still closed, I open my mouth in anticipation of the warm skin against my eager lips..
So tonight I get home from work and I notice that not only is moon full and dark orange, my flowers have started to emerge from the cold earth. I have not cleaned all the dead leaves out of the garden yet because I like to use them to keep the bulbs protected until the frost is over for good. So I have a bunch of bulbs coming up and I noticed one in particular. It is growing tall and green, and I can just see the tip where the flower will emerge. And I saw that this particular flower had pushed up from the ground and right thru a couple of the leaves, effectively spearing them on its journey to awakening. Not letting the mud and the dead brown leaves stop its travel to the light and the warmth.
And I thought, hey, that’s how I feel.
I turn and I smile, bringing the picture up close so i can see it. So young, so happy. The two in picture, holding hands and smiling for the photo. They have no idea what life has in store for them, not then. Back then it was all about the sun and the heat and the long days of summer. The summer nights of mosquitoes and bonfires and the summer days lost in a haze of simmering adolescent desire.
No idea at all.
Life’s curveballs came fast enough, I muse, wiping dust from the corners of the frame with the edge of my polishing cloth.
Too soon the heavy days turn to cold nights. Nights filled with lonliness under woolen blankets, listening to the airplanes overhead. Wondering which one he piloted.
I set the frame down and pick up the next one. In this shot the girl is alone, looking frail and bleak in her formal black dress. She doesn’t gaze at the camera but somewhere further to the left, her gaze softened and unfocused. The grass beneath her feet is a muddy brown of early spring.
I sigh, wipe the tear from my cheek.
We grew up too fast.
its like the waking in the middle of the night, breathless and sweaty with the pillows on the floor and the covers tangled around your ankles. The dream leaving you wrapped in silken darkness and prisoner of your own solitude.
Or its like the gasping after swimming, coming up from the deep darkness of the river bottom to the dappled sun above, breaking thru the water in a spray of cold droplets.
Its like the flutter in your stomach, when you get that electric jolt from someone you accidentally touch. You turn and they are gone but the electricity remains. If you are lucky you made eye contact. If you are really lucky you find out you already know them.
Its like the crawling, grasping hunger that you feel that is not related to food. Its a wish, its a crave, its a crush.
It is its own best friend and it drives you harder, further, longer into uncharted territories.
It grabs your stomach your heart your lungs…it steals your hunger and lightens your head.
It makes you want to dance, to sing, to scream, to cry. And all at the same time.
It sneaks up on you when you don’t expect it, overpowering your smarter senses, taking you to another place and filling your thoughts with thunder and lightning. You can only pray you aren’t driving when it shows up.
It makes your hair stand on end when you are in the shower.
It makes it hard to breathe, hard to think, hard to do anything but think of it. Desire and despair, wrapped together like a coiled snake in the dark. And you about to put your hand in its nest.
Willingly.
I see you flying,
Hair tousled, smile on your face
You close your eyes as the wind brushes your eyelids.
A peaceful look, no doubt.
I hear you cheering as you
Nearly touch the sky
The stars reflecting in your smile.
You wave at me.
And my eyes fill with unwanted tears
As I raise my hand in response.
Someday you will wave goodbye
What blessing is there in knowing how it will happen
When you finally do touch the sky
You will not come lightly back to earth when the ride stops,
Running to me, a quick kiss on the lips before the next ride.
You will continue on, into the stars and beyond
And I won’t be able to kiss you anymore.
*
In the evening of the morning
of the day we went to hell.
In the after of the later
of the time when you were well…
I can wander I can wonder I can sit and bow down under
All the wailing and the thunder that tears my heart asunder
Yet still you are before me
I love you, you adore me
My one and only lover is now threatened by another
Are we bigger are we stronger
Can we hold on any longer?
We fight the fight and face the night
And grab the apple, take a bite.
for in knowledge lies our power
And in every midnight hour
we reach for each and every minute
that doesn’t have your illness in it….
*
Beast, how I hate you.
I hate your pervasive ways, your interfering serpentine madness.
I hate the way you took what we had and twisted it around
Until we have to fight to hold on to what we deserve.
Beast, We will beat you.
We will stop you with chemicals, with toxins and poisons,
We will remove you from every cell of our lives
From every thought of our future.
Beast, you will be gone from our presence like a bad dream in the sunshine.
You will be crushed under our feet like an eggshell into gravel.
You will be sent far away, deep into the labyrinth sewers of discarded medical waste.
And we will link our hands together
And dance upon your demise.
*
I watch you shiver and watch you shake
I watch your cough and the sounds you make.
I wipe your head with a cool rag
I get the inhaler from your bag.
I start to cry and then wipe dry
the tears I fear I have to hide.
I miss the nights that came before
When we snuggled behind the bedroom door.
I grab the needle, the medicine
hit the plunger, push it in.
*
sneaking around the corners like a silent thief at night
riding in the backseat when stopped at the traffic light
dancing in the bloodstream or in the random cells
coming like a coward, leaving a path of living hell.
What creeps within the corners
what knocks upon the door
what comes when no one’s looking
and then sneaks away once more
And in the final moments, while all is calm at night
a sudden breath of darkness and another soul takes flight.
there is no rhyme or reason
there is no way to say
whether you or me tomorrow
whether someone else today
I hear the spiders laughing
while spinning on their webs
I hear the planets sighing
While those behind are crying
At another sudden passing
*
Start with six little green and yellows in a divided dose a day.
The round orange one to offset the side effect of the green and yellows.
The purple capsule to mend the pain that the little white one caused.
The big white ones pack a punch so don’t get addicted (the addiction of the stars!)
the clear stuff comes from a needle. You will be quite sick in 8-10 hours.
Not so bad, a fever and chills.
Oh yes, you might lose some hair.
Do this three times a week.
Don’t forget your vitamins, your cholesterol, your blood pressure pills.
Drink 10 cups of water a day, and remember–
think positive.
*
This morning I woke up early, and like
every other morning, I peeked out the window
to see what weather I will face this day.
Imagine my surprise, when I was near blinded
By a flash of early-morning sunlight.
So bright, and so uncommonly warm.
The grass outside was colored a deep
emerald green, and I could see the tree in profile,
Small buds standing out on the branches like
miniature sentries, holding on for the spring.
I sighed and I laid back down for just another minute.
I turned to look at you
A small sliver of the sunlight fell in the window and carressed your face.
Golden light across your cheeks, I gently touched you and we shared the warmth.
You smiled as you slept.
And I smiled too.
He comes up behind me as I gaze over the distant shore. I am enjoying the feel of the sea air as it brushes the hair from my forehead, soft as a lover’s caress. I feel the change, the spark,the surge in the atmosphere as he approaches me from behind. Eyes closed, I accept his embrace with a sigh. The ships lists slightly and I use this excuse to lean into him a little more than I would have otherwise.
I hear him breathe in the salty air and I listen to his heartbeat behind me. I sigh again.
His arms tighten.
I lean into him another little bit.
Before I know it he has turned me around and I am lost and falling into his deep eyes. I swear I hear music but we are the only people on deck.
His hands are on my shoulders, his fingers inexplicably drawing me closer. I smell his aftershave.
I allow myself to be pulled into him.
Closer.
Closer.
Another swell of the ocean and this time I am rocked backwards out of his arms.
He reaches to steady me but I reach behind me and hold the brass railing instead. I realize that I am standing in front of him, arms thrust behind me and chest thrust out, legs splayed to hold my balance. My heart throbs.
He smiles, reaches his hand to me.
I tremble, breathless.
The clouds cross the sun, bringing sudden darkness to the deck.
It passes quickly and I open my eyes.
The sea air pushes my hair off my forehead, like the caress of a lover.
I sigh as I stare over the distant shore.
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