Fiction from a Song

I think I did promise this.  It is, of course, inspired by Waits's "Kiss Me."  If you have it, you might want to spin it while you read for full effect (ha.  I just know you will, too.).   It's as pure as pure, folks.  (Some of you will be vastly disappointed.  Sorry.)  As always, this is just a writing exercise.  If it weren't, I sure as heck wouldn't be blogging right now, let me tell you.  Sue me.  I have to take my fairy tales where I can find them these days.

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We’ve known each other a long time, more than well enough for you to make free with everything in the house when you’re here, books, TV, music…. For some reason, tonight you’ve picked a playlist full of slow yearning, and as we’re sitting and talking, I’ve been wishing you’d gone for any other group of songs. This one has Thile promising “I Am Yours If You Want Me” and LaMontagne’s anguished “Burn” while you’re there so close. I lose the thread of the conversation as I ponder the special hells I get stuck in and what I must have been like in a previous life to have deserved them. I hope it was fun….

It’s when “Kiss Me” comes on that it happens. I make some random comment about it being a song made for slow dancing when you take my hand and try to pull me to my feet. My immediate reaction is resistance and wariness, which of course makes you laugh. I’m still looking at you to see what the joke is. You just keep holding on to my hand, and even though I know better, I can’t resist that grin.  I grudgingly follow your lead. The next thing I know, we’re leaving the light cast by the lamp, sliding into the semidarkness of the room beyond, and the notes of the song resonate through me.

You’re holding me properly for the dance, but all the humor evaporates. Even in these shadows, I avoid your gaze. Whatever has been hiding there all evening is clearly revealed. It’s too much, and I’m too unsure. It makes me want things that I usually can’t have, so I’m in the long habit of not reaching for them, of slapping my hungry hands away from them. Our eyes meet only a little on this strange ersatz ballroom floor, and each time I look away. This song, it’s going on forever….

But I’m not imagining it, the hand on my back that moves to press me closer to you, the thumb circling my palm. I’m not imagining the way you’ve turned your cheek against mine, moved suddenly so we’re only that one breath-I-can’t-quite-take apart.

“…I want you to kiss me…like a stranger…once again…”

And then you do it. As if it is something you’re trying out. A theory you’ve been working on that you’re not quite sure of. Your hand releases mine to cup my cheek. You brush your thumb over my bottom lip. And then…

“I won’t believe our love’s a mystery….I won’t believe our love’s a sin…”

You pull back and look at me for just a second, and the honest truth is that I think we’re both just a tiny bit shocked. Then something just a little hungry but completely sure passes through your expression before you lean back to me as last of the song fills the room. It will be some time before either of us notices there is no music.

Meditation Upon a Comment

Today, when someone said something about why I hadn't dealt with an online assignment system I run IMMEDIATELY late at night, I replied it was because I'd been busy with other things.  As the students left the class, I heard one of them say something to the effect of, "Well, I guess maybe she does have a life!"

What a shocking revelation!  My God, no!  It makes me laugh the way students perceive their teachers outside school.  We are either supposed to roll into a corner and plug into a recharging socket or hang upside down from our ceiling perches until dawn brings a new teaching day.

Here, then are some imaginary explanations for what I might have been doing instead of updating Shelfari:

1)  I was selected to be a judge at a semi-professional Elvis impersonator competition.  I spent my evening listening to novel interpretations of "Love Me Tender," "Don't Be Cruel," and "Jailhouse Rock."   When that 70-year-old man from Japan stepped out in that rhinestone spangled jumpsuit, struck a pose, and started into "A Little More Action," I really think that might be the best night I've ever had.  Really.

2)  Through a set of circumstances that would take far too long to explain here, I sort of wound up fighting off an elite team of assassins.  Nerf was involved.  That is all I'm allowed to say about the incident at this time.  When the appropriate agencies all decide that the papers are declassified, I'll probably revisit the incident again in my blog.  Since it crosses international lines, it may be awhile.  Maybe all the scars will have faded by then, though....

3)  Well, there was this sort of grinding noise in my back yard, and I looked out there was a big, blue, wooden box out there with a flashing light on the top.  The doors opened, and this lovely lanky guy came out of it talking all British at me and really, it's lucky at all that I'm back in this time and on this planet at all....

4)  I could say elves to you, but it isn't elves exactly, and I'd rather you said it for yourself.  (about four thousand bonus points to you, a homework pass, a gold star, and my undying admiration if you catch that reference)

5) An absolutely majestic performance on the flying trapeze, center ring, with the circus that passed through town last night.  You missed it.  You should have seen it.  I had a spangly costume and everything.

6)  I was forced to pretend to be married when the student from my past who sort of proposed to me ("What sort of man are you looking for teacher?  Let me tell you what sort of man you are looking for..."  describes creepy, creepy self  "You could never marry any other type of man, teacher....") showed up on my doorstep.  This farce went on for quite some time and wound up involving a good friend and several neighborhood children who guest starred as my "husband" and "kids" before it was done.  The film version will be hitting the big screen sometime around Christmas....

7)  Okay, so there was this guy, and this big, fast Honda bike, and Louisiana in the evening, and...well....

I think this amused me even if it didn't do anything for you.  Sorry to drag you through it, but you know how it goes, darlin'.....

Rainy Musings

The rain on the roof makes me wish for you.  The gentle drumming sound of it and the music of it pooling as it falls from the eaves soothes and makes me drowsy.  If you were here, we could curl up together under the covers in the soft grey light.  I would bury my face in the curve of your neck; you could wrap your arms around me.  I would run my hand down your back and let it rest just at the base of your spine.  I want to fall asleep to the sounds of your heart and your breath and the rain.  When we wake up, I would open my eyes and see you still there, feel the strength of you there beside me like some unexpected gift.  I might reach out with just the tips of my fingers and trace the line of your cheekbones, your beautiful mouth, watch the sleep fade from your eyes....

Moon

More Fiction

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The world is a subtle palette of blues and greys.  The air is soft, and the breath of Spring is in it, subtle, infectious, delightful.  The moon is rising, perfect and pale, a disc of bone slowly manifesting to dominate the horizon. It is impossible to resist that ancient lunar pull, and I can feel it tingling through my blood like a surge of adrenaline.   It is a night too perfect to stay inside, a night too perfect to spend in front of the endless reruns or sacrificed to other distractions.

If I step out the side door, I almost think I’ll see you crouched there, silvered by the surreal light, made into something not quite of this earth, if ever you can be said to be.  You’d be in new-growing tender grass, idly plucking at the clover with your fingertips, waiting there for me to come out as if it had been a foregone conclusion, an inevitable thing that I would.  And if I came to you there, felt the wetness of night’s dew clinging to my feet and ankles, slipped my hand into yours, I wonder what change would come, what magic would begin.  

Because of course it is a night for magic.  It is a night for transformation.  Here while the stars spin above us, while the moon covers everything in a cloak of wonder, suddenly all things are possible.  I might unfurl great black raven’s wings and fly away from everything that troubles me as I so often long to do, might soar to touch the face of the white sphere above us.  Wisdom might be given to me.  I might interpret the song of the wind in the leaves.  

You’d look into my eyes, smile a little at my whimsy without ever a word having been spoken between us, touch my cheek gently.  And that would be the truest magic of all, that you could know me, understand that a night of such natural wonder fills my soul to the fullest measure, fills my imagination with impossible things, and love me anyway.

Another Short Piece of Fiction

Another writing exercise, more's the pity.

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You somehow conjured yourself into a random dream the night the blood moon filled the sky, pulling back the shower curtain to climb inside the spray with me.  All things changed.  I could not breathe.  There was too much to see, too much to feel to waste time with such trivial matters as breathing -- the water running in tiny sacred rivers down your shoulders, tributaries branching across the plains of your chest, that nameless something in your eyes as they seek mine.  And then your hand slid through my hair, pulling me against you, erasing the unnecessary and unbearable space between us.  For a moment that hung like a falling star, your mouth remained apart from mine.  Hunger bared its teeth, sharpened its claws.   My trembling fingers slid up to your cheek, over your bottom lip, and with water running like tears down our faces, finally, a kiss….

Absolutely an Exercise in Fiction

Testing out my fiction skills.  Please don't take this to be anything other than a writing exercise.  Obviously, if it were, there would be other bloggage to accompany it....

The sky is a cerulean vault overhead, and we’re inside a paperweight, a snowglobe filled with verdure.  You look like you belong here, but then again, you look like you belong everywhere.  There is no place I cannot imagine you fitting perfectly, no place I can imagine you looking wrong or unnatural.  Just now, you’re here in this green kingdom, though, listening to the wind sing high and soft in the trees, listening to the distant argument of certain raucous crows. You lie on this soft old white feedsack quilt in the middle of a summer-green field, one tanned arm behind your head.  That old t-shirt shows just a little of your stomach, enough to make ripples but not enough actually to incite action; your feet are bare at the end of strong legs, toes curling and uncurling.   We don’t talk.  I don’t need or even want words right now.  I need to watch you watching the world for a little while, absorbing it, breathing it in.  I need to watch the sun run its warm golden fingertips over your face, watch you turn into its touch, see those clever eyes close as you savor the sensation.  

You shift and stir, making a small noise of contentment.  Then you look at me.  All pretense of hiding behind my book is gone, and you know me well enough to know that even though the paperback is open in my hands, the only thing I’ve been reading for quite some time now is the changing expression on your face.  That little smile, the one that comes on slowly and is somehow something feline, curls your lips and your eyes turn a little amused, a little bold.  I return my gaze to my book, try to ignore the way that grin makes my pulse do outrageous things.  Your head tilts, and you idly trace the tip of one finger across the long scar on my foot, move up to the ones on my knee.  Touch.  Touch.  Touch.  Again, again, a message in tactile Morse until I finally lower the book again.  The amusement in your gaze is gone, and when our eyes meet, your hand closes gently on my leg.  I look away, taking my time, slip the little bronze bookmark onto the page, close it, lay it aside, and sink into green, gold, white, and blue.