coming together

He watched her walk. Of nimbus light, of shadow envious, elegant, graceful. By ache and pain, he knew, by smilie and metaphor worn, by years paid in crow's feet and lips dry of words held. More than a quarter century, gone. The best years of their lives, lost. Like cliff pounded into the debris of regret.

There she was, there, walking, as she had always walked, diminutive curve of back, slight forward rotation of pelvis, straw-hued hair brushing delicate white shoulders. There was a quiver of cheek as arms opened, reached. The circle closing, fingers lacing, as lips to water opened, once torn from time, healing, coming together.

She sat across, looking away, hands trembling. Her coffee not touched, a faint smell of cream and sugar rising with the morning. The cacophony of breakfast broke around them as he reached to steady her hands, to know again their touch, to take the measure of skin, bone, time and memory. She stole glances. Her eyes wide, blue as sky, still. And they spoke of things past not spoken, of letters written not read. Sentence by sentence, slowly pealing back layers of darkness; words freed from wanting lips; the breath of light, of day seen, lived, walked.

In places, memory clear. In others, one held the other, kindly, with care, words chosen thoughtfully along the tightrope of reunion. Single steps, each, magnified. Opening the possibility of another, another gesture of touch or word or sometimes just a look. And most blessedly, there was silence too, moments of peaceful coexistence, solemn as vespers among varnished wood and leathered stone.

some other window

Do we not seek the divine in everything? Seeking is free. Why would we seek any less in any thing?

So when we are together, I look for a touch, a glance, a word, the language of a sigh, of eyes not looking seen, the braille of muscle, bone and skin. Sometimes it is the tilt of the head. The curve of a smile felt in the heart. Dopamine floods my neural pathways. The body relaxes as upon a summer lake floating. Cognition of pain is absent. Tear ducts dry. Production shut down. With presence, sunlight, dawn, day and blue sky. And as no rain falls without clouds, her atmosphere is clear to the horizon. The body itself has travelled, been touched of eolian time. Skin is not as it was nor will it ever be, as it was. Those years have passed. Recorded. Put away. Yet the inner lip has not changed of hue or glisten, some last holdout in youthful amaranth. So too the eyes rimmed in memory, wet of hope or loss or dream is not known but for the seeking, the needing of that touch as one might imagine a newborn, not knowing, but needing to be held, touched, suckled in union of mother in child. Sighs are released like balloons escaping from young hands unexpectedly. Beautiful in quiet release, forever rising into the pale cloudless heavens. In these moments, the language is not of words and sometimes not of touch or even looking. Some other window has opened. And the breeze is as nothing other than pure light.

outside my window

Outside my window, just beyond the computer screen, sits a beautiful house with a beautiful young family. A mom, a dad and a small child. I spend a lot of time on my computer. Always my screen framed by that house, by their comings and goings, this young family and their beautiful house. And this is where I just can't type anymore.

__________


They just came out. Shorts and baseball caps. Mom loading the little boy in his car seat. The dad wearing flip-flops. I watch him lock the house door. And then the car backing out. The three of them. Where are they going? Did they plan it? Were there discussions? And I wonder if they know of their day as I know of it? I wonder if they are able to live this life in awareness? Funny the worlds we create, each a separate universe of our own heaven or hell. Each unique to the interior of our psyche.

I see them in sun, like today, and rain, like yesterday. Always from the front door to the car. The little boy must be two, maybe three years old. Hair shorn, a little man living his little life and although we see the same sky, I couldn't feel more apart, his reality and mine.

to look upon her

I need to look upon her. And the thought occurs I can add nothing more. In her, I see my world entire. Past, present, future. And in her, life. From her golden hair to her pale grey eyes with flecks of blue sky. She smiles in the purest form of brow arching and cheek rising. Her skin has aged. I suspect in life more than time. But the eyes, her eyes, remain as they were. Brilliant flawless sapphires. I feel them upon me; mostly when I am not looking. When I catch her unafraid to look, before she looks away, again. Imagination perhaps, but in that moment, less than a second, I see what can't be said. I see the wideness of wonder that belies the passage of time and it is in these singular moments, so fleeting, so flutteringly delicate that I stare without blinking, the muscles of my face released of tension and time itself seems without measure or court or even sense.

The minutes between us flow into hours and the hours blend an afternoon of muted sounds and faded colors along the periphery, everything other, blissfully out of focus. I notice the youthful wet flesh of her lower lip as it presses my thumb, recording my warmth from her held hand. And through it all, she looks with limpid eyes, felicity in the linger, her breath warm. A warmth soon inside me, and I notice the seesawing of our breath, the rhythm found as naturally as sea to cove. There is no effort, no trying, no attempt to do or be and at times, no thought either. Lips simply fall one into the other as diver to ocean, a quiet falling of fate's gravity with nary a splash. And as the ocean torn is healed, so it is when she finds me. And within her, as within the sea, I find a serenity known not on land.

Satisfied

774. round the campfire

They sat the campfire for the longest time before Kyra spoke. Read to us Trev. Let us know not of word but of song. Standing with eyes but for Em, he opened his notebook and began to read. Those that were there said later, perhaps it was the night, perhaps the flicking fire upon his face, but as the words rolled forth, something changed and the Trevor they knew was from that moment, but memory.

from the notebook of Trev, a reading:


The house is quiet but for my thoughts. The sky, grey, and the feeling the same, the world colorless without her. I cannot explain this stark dichotomy. Sledgehammer blunt. All or nothing. Light or dark. And what pounds is a longing within my chest to hold and be held, to again luxuriate in her arms as in a warm bath, for that is how it feels, this peace, of a calmness such that comes after a storm, when the air is clean and crisp and the grass bejeweled of recent rain.

I want to walk in the light of her eyes and to know what it is to be looked upon as she looks, as salve and succor to my pains. And there too is reaching without asking, as two old trees our hands branch toward the other and fingers twine a firm warmth beyond my ability to explain. So I look, and perhaps think upon it too much, for I know it is not the holding or lacing or twining for no other hand would do what her hand does, would reach effortlessly into the heart's uncharted terrain and walk therein so freely, as if home, as if always home it was. No it is not the holding and this is why the eye seems so limited, for how to explain what is seen is not what is witnessed or experienced or known? The tongue seems lost, in retreat of a force known within and this, I say, is how it is, this audible click of a puzzle of two, fitting within as the view without.

How to say how one lives in the other, where thought is synchronized simultaneously and where two hearts beat but one is heard, where to separate is to take what is one and make it two and therein lies the pain as surely as there is pain in the breaking of souls grown together. And breathing changes, for how can it not when the life of one is the life of the other and where there is but one, nothing is as it was, nothing the same, a bleeding I would say, a bleeding out of hue, of color as if the very heart itself in protest or melancholy pumps less.

She is somewhere, this very moment. And her beauty is seen by eyes not my own, the lilt of her voice heard beyond my walls upon ears I know, know not the melody of joy I cannot live without. And I praise fate while cursing the same as every clock an enemy, every tick a reminder that the day once lived is lived never more. So I sigh or more so it seems, something within me sighs and I feel it, my soul. I feel it within me as I have never felt before. And this is where they come, these sighs. And they come like waves upon the thought, of a clock ticking, of her sight unseen, her touch unfelt, her whisper lost on the miles for even a stone's throw is too far as too the hour too short.

I am in the hands of something greater than myself. And there is life in me as if reborn to the world for that is how it is. Nothing looks the same, sounds the same, tastes the same. And all my years are but nothing against this tide of her and I feel as helpless as the shore to resist what is coming.

773. of nothing I have known

She runs in my veins. Intoxicates me. Alters perception. And time is of nothing I have known, when she is around. I know this by fact and absence, like one knows day by night and night by day. Every sense of her plays a dance on my neurons, my brain afire of sight and sound, smell and touch such that now, I say even now, just the thought is all to stir my chemical high, to touch the chemistry in me with nary pin nor needle. This is how she moves, how she plays with my soul as the wind through the trees and like ice it is when she leaves and I shutter and shake in withdrawal, the sense so strong as to be matters of report, of chills so violent no fire can warm what she alone has touched. I am beyond return and what has been healed can heal no more. I live with ache full sore, of muscle rope tight in gale and the billow of canvas screaming in strain of horizon, of light, of the moment she returns to fill again my veins with her sweet poison.

found in Trev's notebook

date unknown

772. the page

Later that night and unable to sleep, Yul found Trev on the porch. Tell me how it is she asked. He looked at her for awhile and then begin to write. Upon finishing, he handed her the page. She read, then wept. Although they sat till morn, nothing more was said between them.

The page:

How to say it. The sound of her breathing has ruined music for me. Nothing sounds of heaven as her rising chest. And what before, is now but earthbound dust. This is how it is when I say everything has changed. And if I were to say of her, opium, neither this nor that could I deny how the very blood of me courses through the narrows of her touch. And the fit of curve on curve is as canyon to river, of one from the other, each as to the other as light to day and star to night for what am I without her. Nothing. Nothing without her. So when I say she is the very breath within my lungs, the light greening my leaves, and her kisses, so hummingbird like in the giving and taking, so delicate as to make her very eyes appear as dream, then this and only this I say is how it is, for the act itself is untranslatable.

771. natural ease

You guys sit an awful lot, but I see no talking, sometimes no touching. What the hellocks is that? asked Rog.

Not sure how to explain it, said Trev. In a word, breathing. We sit with the natural ease of breathing.

Breathing? You two just sit and breathe? Is that it?

Trev sighed. Yes and no. When we are together, when we sit side by side, it just is, it just happens, and it is like the breath, the very essence of life and there is no need, no desire, and certainly no thought of adding anything to what is already complete.

You know what I think. I think you're full of bullshite.

Trev smiled. I wasn't finished.

Well, by all means, continue.

Ease such there is no need to tell of it, to profane it with translation.

_______

So what did Trev say, asked Yul.

Nothing, replied Rog.

So all that talking I saw was nothing?

Yep.

Really?

Nothing but gibberish. I think the boy is on drugs.

Yul says something under her breath.

What did you say?

I said I'd like to be on that drug.

Rog just stared. Yul stared back. Dinner was quiet, but not nearly as quiet as the night.