Day off alone.

The wind blew high, mostly over and through the trees, not down to me walking. Sporadic bursts threatened the umbrella, caused the scurrying of fresh debris on the leaf- and limb-littered street. All color was deep: water-black, brickleaf, gold, the greens of grave and pine. Whirling, rushing sounds panned in from behind, to the right, over there, like a storm being turned on-and-off in the distance. My departure from the dark house into light was sudden, and the strength and strangeness of the day lay unevenly on me like a blanket over a feverish child. I kept each wet step sneaker-light, though, through the neighborhood and out to the splashy bustle of Prince Avenue, where I stopped and watched the pattern of cars shift left and right, waiting for a hole.

The girl behind the counter knew my name, and I knew the names of most of the people seated in the small café but not hers. Later, glancing up from my book, I caught her looking. Feeling nothing but tepid curiosity, I turned toward the plate glass and watched sightlessly the grey blur of motion beyond. I turned these words over in my head, patched and prodded, piled them end-to-end and then in low, fat bundles. The boldest of them I set in the rain to soften. They were still there when I left, blurring like sidewalk chalk. The girl behind the counter who knew my name did not say it again, only “goodbye, have a nice day.”

Home, in the bathroom, the quixotic heater humming raggedly through the floor vent, I stared into the back yard. Long yellow leaves covered the still-green grass, and through the doily haze of the curtain they seemed like hundreds of ripening bananas left lazing under rain. In the rising, close heat of the small room I imagined a mad new world of wanton waste, where nothing was finite, nothing sacred, nothing saved; where we might leave words out to rot, or eat them in great choking swallows, afraid of no future, afraid of nothing at all.

Fugue.

I think about the teeth-mark bruises that will turn up on his arm, purple and hot. I think about the soft circle of your mouth when you come. I think about your tiniest voice sleepy in his ear, saying anything at all. They come on at all hours, day-lit or dark and lonely, hit me from the back when he says your name, which he does often because you are falling in love and the syllables sit fat on his tongue begging to be rolled off. He could be saying "Aphrodite" for all the relevance it has to my heart these years later, but he is not, he is saying your name because of all the reasons I said your name and it's like he bought a piece of me against my will. Eminent Domain, I think they call it, if the memory of your eyes on me were property, which it is not.

Still, I had no intention of moving.

Love the memory, and leave it.

Her hair was brown when we met. Now in the kitchen we are older and her hair is blonde. The house is thick and damp, light losing to the dense depths, falling softly, broken. The dog watches us cry: one strange tower of people pressed together at hip and forehead, slow hands and breath. He is sweet and ignorant in witness. There's no music playing--there's never music when these things happen, only rain and the sounds of damn shame and too many goodbyes and I hope this will be the last. I kiss her again (again again) and it's not enough. Things do not get better, they just get smaller, until that day in the kitchen of your friend's house with his dog watching and you kiss and taste almost nothing but her lips as they are right then.

Her hair was brown when we met.

"There ain't nothing we can do about it now."

our hands were hungry
our mouths wet
there seemed a madness
that slept beneath our skin
and rose
all fat and flushed
to have its lazy way with us

This time next year.

They're in a room somewhere, the projector and the blank white wall. The scene is digital and crisp, on a stuttering loop. Two people are laughing, up there on the wall, eyes as big as they'll go, and then small, soft, smiling. The only person left in the room has her hand on the door handle and the audience is squirming -- someone yells, "Don't turn around!" and she does not, turns the handle, turns hard and slow, a bone clicking in her wrist. And then she's standing in the doorway, long light coming in and in and in. The loop goes black behind her and the audience goes home and we wonder aloud in our cars and on sidewalks and in our beds if she's still standing there in the light with one foot through the door.

Reconstruction of a kiss.

Her skin is soft after all and you knew it would be, but all the waiting, catching only glimpses sliding from shirt sleeves, out of skirt hems, maddening ankles and wrists, or sometimes only her neck, half a collar bone and the line of her jaw slow curving chin to ear, underlining smiling lips. Your mind gets caught up in topography and forgets that the real deal is biology. So now you’re touching her, up close and touching her, and it’s fresh water after days at sea. The four free inches from forearm to wrist are the longest inches of your life and you take your time, run your fingers slowly down, down, and into the palm of her hand, where they remain as you kiss.

I'm just saying.

The things I no longer feel would choke a horse.