That Moment When....

...this wonderfully odd little song comes up in my Spotify playlist, and my very first thought is, "Gotta share that with ____."  Only we don't do that anymore, so I can't.

Bit of crap, that......

Thoughts Right Before Sleep

If I'm honest, this could just be the bone-shattering fatigue or the total sugar crash or too much or not enough caffeine or the sad, scary day or a random flutter of a dozen other things. That qualifier in place, it must be said that I miss you. 

I don't know how this happened. 

Well.... That's probably a lie. 

I was actually waiting for it to happen, but I was hoping to be proven wrong just once. 

I'm too tired to do much navel-gazing. I'll strip it down to the bones. You're gone, and I wish you weren't. 

The End. 

Again. 

Rain

I woke up to the sound of rain, the gentle susurration of water slipping across the leaves of the live oak, falling down from the shingles of the roof, cascading onto the little wooden staircase leading from the south porch.  The pearl-grey half-light of cloud-shrouded skies made every shade of green outside the window somehow more intense that even full sun.

I wanted you to be there.  I would take your hand, and we'd walk out across the sparkling new-mown yard, heedless of the cool rain coming down.  Under tulip poplars still carrying their yellow-green and orange cups, you'd pull me into your arms, and I am quite sure that the tears slipping down my cheeks would mix in with the rain and go unnoticed.

I'm so very tired, and I've missed you so very much, you see.  I see you everywhere.  You hide in unexpected corners of daily routine.  You are in most of my books, just waiting for the unwary turn of a page.  You're in the big black crows that I see everywhere, clever-eyed and beautiful.  You're in the lyrics of every other song.  You're in the rumble of the thunder.  You're in the rain.

And this is maudlin, sentimental and overdone.  I dislike it even as I'm writing it.  Tomorrow, the sun will be out, and I will not be so full of that all-pervasive greyness that makes me wish.  Tomorrow, the armor of routine will insulate me, cut me off from everything not necessary to survive.  This does not mean, however, that if you were to appear on my doorstep right now, broad shoulders and hair dampened with this rain, that I would not step outside to meet you with open arms.

Airstream Dream

Last night, I had a nightmare.  The details wouldn't mean a thing to you.  The monsters involved have been hanging around a long time.  I woke up from it disconcerted.  That icky feeling that lingers after something stirs up the sediment of the subconscious persisted through a flying early morning trip to the central post office, drug store, and (God help me) Wal-Mart.  When I got home, I went outside and filled up all my bird feeders, came in, watched Singing in the Rain, and played a lot, and I do mean A LOT, on Pinterest.

While I was avoiding reality online, I searched Pinterest for stuff about Airstreams.  Then three hours of my life disappeared.  There are a million pins about vintage travel trailers.  Some are restorations while others are total makeovers.  All of them made me yearn.  Oh, how very, very much I want an Airstream.

I want to fit it up with vintage colors and cool old stuff, much of which I probably could take from right here in the house.  I want to give it a clever name painted right on the outside, install solar panels on the roof, hook up an old Chevy pickup to it, load up you and the dogs (Chewie and Roux, at least), and head out.

We could start with small trips, I guess, but what I really want to do is head down the road with sort of an end goal, maybe California or Seattle in three weeks, but nothing in the middle nailed down.  I want to stop on the side of the road and take pictures of old neon signs.  I want to stand on the edge of the Grand Canyon and have my breath taken away.  I want to a cook meal of dubious quality on equipment older than both of us and pray it comes out okay, find a place to stop if it doesn't.

I want to stand outside with you silently in the starlight somewhere that isn't here and look up into the sky until the majesty of it fills me up.  I want to fight with you over something stupid like the stereo or the shower or the inevitable flat tire or the dog walking or the washing-up (as would be bound to happen if we were really trapped together for three weeks in something so small as a truck and my theoretical Airstream) and after, find a way to tape it all back together again, understand each other better through it.  I want to sleep on a bed that we have to set up together, shoo large dogs off, and put away again in the morning.  I want to pour you coffee from my grandfather's stove percolator into a white milkglass Fire King mug I found years ago on eBay.

Ah, today, my gypsy feet are itching, itching, and sometimes lately I think I could happily take only what would fit into this imaginary caravan I'm creating in my mind and not look back.  It's a crazy sort of wide-awake dream, I suppose, but it helps to counter the darkness left behind by the other kind.  It won't hurt either of us if I indulge it just a little bit longer.

All Things End

I am tired, Beloved,
of chafing my heart against
the want of you;
of squeezing it into little inkdrops,
And posting it.
~Amy Lowell, "The Letter"

You've been showing up in my dreams again.  I close my eyes, go about the business of putting the day away, folding all the little pieces neatly and storing them in their respective drawers and cubbies, and there you are, sitting calmly, watching from a distance.

Quite frankly, in light of the fact that you're not a part of my life anymore, it is in poor taste.  Declasse. A little gauche.

The truth is that I have no intentions of walking down that path again.  There is just nothing at the end of it, concrete and ashes, an empty parking lot with leaves scuttling across its broken surface.  And, no, that wasn't always the case, but whatever was good is gone now.

It's okay.  Gloria Gaynor has a song about it, and she's right.  All things end.  That doesn't mean that I have to go with it.   I just need to get a little more discipline when my eyes close, and all will be well.

Disquieting Muse

I am dreaming of you again.  You show up…everywhere.  Inevitably the nightmares come, but just when things are at their most bizarre, I look up and you have stepped in.  Sometimes you even stop the strangeness, lay your hands on my shoulders and turn me in another direction, wave your hands in a dismissal and I wake up.  Sometimes it's just a flash of perception as I flee or fight whatever demon is on the nightly marquee, and the world of my unconscious spins on.

There are the dreams where you talk and the dreams where you are a silent part of the background.  There are the dreams in which I have no idea why you would be there at all, nothing in them relating to you in any way.  You are the perpetual dress extra, the Hitchcockian cameo that defines the genre.   It’s enough to make me wonder half-seriously if you are something from a sci-fi novel, someone who can walk in the sleeping mind of another.

It’s not uncomfortable, but it is strange.  Why would I dream you sitting in a blue and buff melamine desk, pen twiddling in your hand, occupied with whatever is in front of you but still bored?  You do not fit there.  Why would I dream of a house I’ve never seen in which you show up in the hallways and corridors just to say hello and disappear like mist in the sun?  Sometimes we actually talk; sometimes you greet me and we are swept away into other things.  When I wake up, though, I always remember that you were there, playing "Where's Waldo" with the fragments and detritus of the day.

Please understand.  It’s not that I’m not glad to see you.  It’s just that you’re becoming more and more like de Chirico’s Disquieting Muses, something that gets more and more unnerving every time it is contemplated.  You are the shadow that no angle of light should be able to cast, the thing standing just out of frame that can be sensed but not quite caught. If there is to be any face on the subconscious that drags me through the world of dreams every night, I think we would both prefer it not to be yours.

Birthday Presents

Every year I'm asked what I want for my birthday.  There are only three days left now, and what I want most this year is nothing anybody's money could buy.

I'd like to look out my door and see you standing there, a complete surprise.  You'd come in without a word, slide those beautiful hands up, draw me to you before I can even ask you why you're here, and kiss me.  I'd like it to be such a kiss that I forget all my usual objections, that all my little dodges, quick-witted diversions, and outright lies don't even have a chance to keep me away.  I'd like it to be such a kiss that I forget that we're still just standing there in the door, barely in the house.  I'd like it to be a kiss that shuts down the part of my mind that is always a little bit uneasy and questioning, always looking for the motives behind the actions.  That may be too much to ask of any single action between two people, but it is my birthday, and I guess I do get a wish....

I want you to kiss me like it's a return to your native element, like it's a form of worship, like you're speaking a secret first language.  I want, for a brief glorious moment, not to be made the center of your personal universe because no other person should be enthroned there, but instead for mine to be knocked out of its quiet, calm orbit and sent spinning.  I want the weak knees, the racing heart, the tell-tell shiver chasing like iced lightning up my spine.  I want my hands which so often move to push away for the sake of some kind of self-defense to begin to hold, to cling.

There's a beauty to this request.  It requires some skill but no outlay of cash.  You don't even have to mess about with wrapping paper, always problematic, those stick-on bows, which never do, or try to have something shipped here on time.  Just show up, step in, and deliver.  That's as simple as I can get it.

Salt on My Tail

If you don't know the old wives' tale about how to catch a bird, you might need to look it up.  Otherwise...well...the title of this one's just weird, isn't it?  (by me, today)

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Salt on My Tail

Free again on wide strong wings
and you won’t ever catch me
Hi-lo-ho-ho all you like
Coax low and sweet
hold the lure tempting
in your outstretched hands

But I’m no tassel-gentle
I’ve slipped those jesses
torn away that hood
and now my eyes
are full of nothing but sky

So if you’re determined
all I can say is
Beware the talons
be smart - be fast
I hope to God you’re nimble
because getting the salt on my tail
when I’ve no plans to land at all
is going to be something of a gamble

Patience, Please

I close my eyes for a while
And force from the world a patient smile...

"I Gave You All" ~ Mumford & Sons

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I'm afraid I must call on your patience and your gentleness tonight.  If you were here with me, I might even go so far as to sit down beside you, take your hands in mine, lean on your shoulder, invite closeness instead of sitting across the room, instead of keeping the space that I'm more comfortable with between us.  

It's been one of those weeks, one of those times when I hurt.  When I'm tired.  When the spring inside me is at low-ebb.

My precious students have been trying to make me laugh today, and I love them for it, but that's not really what I need.  What I need is stillness and that uncanny understanding that you have of me that lets me take off all my masks and lay down all my swords for just a few essential moments. 

Invocation

Today, I'd give quite a lot to see you.  I've been a little sick, and just now, just this moment with rain spitting from a sullen sky, I'm a little sad.  In a perfect world, I'd look up and you'd be there like an antidote to all the badness that slowly creeps through my veins.  If I had any magic in me, any power to call forth, I would be tempted to use it.  But that's a selfishness, I suppose, an indulgence.  I'm sure you're hip-deep in your own battles.  Still, I can't help but glance toward the door once in awhile and wish....

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.

With Apologies to Bryan, Henry, Katherine, and Anne

I almost titled this one "Run to You," but then I thought better of it after my previous post about that song.  And yet, these are the words that keep coming to my mind right now.  This is, more than any other thing, what I want to do.

I want to run to you.   I want to do this almost literally.  I want to have almost one of those moments from a cheesy stupid chick flick where I get in a car, drive, get out, stumble to find my footing and wind up in your waiting embrace.  There wouldn't need to be words because you would recognize that I am past the point of endurance now, past the point of being able to carry this alone (although I have tried), or I wouldn't have had to come to you with it at all.  You would just enfold me, hold me in a grip just one or two degrees short of too tight so I could feel that there was one thing that was stable, one thing that was not going anywhere, one thing that was unquestionably secure, and we would stand there.  I would listen to the steady, rational sound of your heart beating, and I would be reminded that this was all I had to do, live and be here in this place with you at this moment.  I would be permitted to let all the other go.  I would pry my mental fingers open and slowly lay down the burdens that are breaking me.

I'm tired of war drums.  I'm tired of the sounds of panic and sirens going off and wailing and despair and the end of worlds and the feel of all the decks shifting beneath my feet as attack after attack hits.  I just want to bury my face in the collar of your shirt and smell fabric softener and you, just want to feel you solid and warm, without caprice and logical, calm and asking nothing of me that I can't give you, a place of peace.

If I could have this just for a little while, I think I could endure all the rest of it.  I could fold the moment like an origami crane and put it in my pocket, take it out and hold it in the palm of my hand when all the voices around me grow shrill and insane, when every situation is beyond my ability to better or even affect.  I could remember the feeling of you holding me, of you grounding me to this earth to keep me from spinning away into the chaos that surrounds me, and I could rise up to shove the stupidity aside again and start the fight anew.

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....

Summer Lightning

Sometimes, I see things happen, and my first thought is that I should tell you about it.  There are little pieces of my day that I look at, tuck away, and wish I could share with you at the end.

I hope you understand that this isn't an every-moment-of-every-day thing.  You don't rule my thoughts or permeate my every waking moment.  You're not an obsession.  I don't do those anymore.  I'm not Juliet, and God knows I'm not looking for any sort of Romeo.

But sometimes you do cross my mind.  

I see things that I know you'd find amusing, and I wish I could bring them to you just to see you enjoy them, wish I could see that beautiful light of happiness dawn in those eyes, see that true smile, not your little clever restrained one, once in awhile.  Events occur that I want to bring to you just to talk with you about, just to know your thoughts, to bounce them back and forth between us for awhile.  

When these moments come to mind, I just let them flicker like the summer lightning, like the faerie fire they are, and they disappear.  What I dream of and what I actually have are very different, after all.  I will stay grounded in the real.  It's safer that way.

Moonlight and Movies

The story unfolded, glorious technicolors just there in front of my windshield, an entertainment made of flickering bits of light and dark, and I was very happy.  I could lean my head out, stare up, and see stars glittering against that blue velvet vault.  The yellowed globe of the moon slowly lifted itself over the treeline, an extra decoration seen briefly before being obscured by the clouds that dotted the sky.  Everything was wonderful.

As always, the only thing missing was you.

I kept thinking about how much you would have liked the movie, how much the drive-in aspect of it would have amused you.  I kept seeing your long legs stretched out in that small space, your feet popped up on the dash next to mine.  We'd have made quite a tangle, but it would have been fun.

One day, it would be nice if these little simple moments weren't fragments of fiction, if we were really sharing the popcorn and the silver screen and the small spaces and the starlight together.  I am not sure, though, that I really believe that this will ever happen.

Dreams

You're walking in my dreams again.  Every time I close my eyes, there you are waiting for me.

The first time, I dreamed that I was a child again, running and playing in some golden woods.  My cousins were there, and in the way of dreams, we were looking for something, some grand pretend adventure we'd devised.  I no longer remember what.  I suppose it doesn't matter.  The light came through the trees in that greenish dappling, and, suddenly you were there, too.  Suddenly, you always had been.  You were one of us, one of the scruffy gang of explorers there among the trees.  You grabbed my hand and we pulled each other along as we ran.  That time, when I woke up, I smiled.  I felt happy.  It was a silly, sunny sort of dream, and it didn't feel wrong for you to be there.

Since then, though, when I drop into the world of dreams, you're always there waiting.  Last night, I dreamed I was simply walking through the house, taking care of some chore.  You came and knocked on the front door.  I stood there astonished as you rocked back on your heels slightly, looking over your shoulder at something that had caught your attention, waiting for me to open it.  It took me a long moment to decide whether I was going to or not, and you turned around and studied me quite seriously.  Both of us were much more serious than the opening of a front door warranted.  Then a group of my best friends appeared, and the situation passed.  I let everyone in.

I wish I knew what you were doing hanging out in my dreams.  I'm almost sure you have a million better places to be.  I'd sleep much better if you weren't doing guest appearances, too.  This is strange.  Hopefully it will stop soon.

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.