Tiptoe

The waves tiptoe up the dark bare sand of the beach. Over and over, they wash our feet with their dying churn before retreating to the safety of the vast ocean. Behind the beach on which I lay is the island, a large unlit foreboding presence in the dim washed out moonlight that is the night. The fire beside which we made love on the beach still burns just outside the reach of the waves but its warmth and light have been turned inwards. It won't be long before it consumes itself. There is no one else on the island to heed the quiet warnings in the endless dance of the waves.

As the dark on the beach gets deeper, bit by bit the waves gather courage to reach higher and higher underneath my naked body. I can feel the sand beneath my back slipping away little by little with each retreat of the waves. Feeling untethered, I look behind and the mass of the island seems distant and small. I close my eyes, and let time like the sand slip away from between us.

When at last I can feel your hand in mine I turn towards you to kiss the dark wet hair that curls around your ear and whisper, “Did I tell you, my love?”

You turn back towards me, reaching with your lips to kiss my nose. I cannot help smiling whenever you do that.

“Did I tell you that you are always on the tip of my mind.”

How long?

How long do you have to imagine someone before they become real?

The first sounds to break through to the frayed edges of my consciousness were the squeaks of the swing from dull to sharp and back over and over, a deeply familiar sound of metal grating against metal. Time came along for the ride in the periodicity of the sound, breaking down my defenses, intruding on the mindlessness I so cherished.

I don't know how long it took, but eventually I could hear the roar of the waves crashing into the beach and then receding, endlessly repeating their futile assault on the sand. Eight squeaks of the swing between every two roars that marked the dashing of the waves at their peak. The pendulum of sound became time.

I began to feel the faint spray of the waves, the salty moist air against my skin and lips.

"Come back to me, my love". Your voice rides the waves into my mind.

I can feel your hand in mine, and turn to you sitting next to me on the swing.

Bones

You are the love I have always lost. You are my love over and over.

I wrote every word that made your bones, I wrote your hair. I wrote your eyes.
I wrote your smile that fills my dreams.
The weight of my words is the substance of your flesh.
Every inch of your skin, every inch I have kissed with my lips and my fingers.
Your every curve is the contour of my thoughts.

If I ever wake up, will you run away with my mind?

An Iron Bed

Meet me in a poem
of an iron bed;
wipe the dust away.
                                    --------  From "Flowers" by The Civil Wars

Wasted, beneath the moon I dream of you.

Your eyes closed, your face in my hands, the dark of your hair flowing around the white of your shoulders in waves, the curves of your body melting beneath mine, the gleam of your smile teasing of untold pleasures.

I look up from the smile on your face, and all around the bed grow weeds in my garden of secrets. No matter what you do, they will never give me away. Through the iron bars, I can see my shadow stretch to the horizon. Only it can't be my shadow, for it is bleeding. Glistening in the moonlight, the blood traces the lines of the bed as it climbs steadily all around us. I close my eyes and bend downward to kiss you, but cannot reach your lips below me.

Someday I will finally meet you and my lips will find yours.

In the meantime, I dream of you. And inside my head, you dream of me too.

How I want to

I missed you
But I haven't met you
Oh, but I want to
Oh how I want to
                             ---- From To Whom it may Concern by Civil Wars


In the night, it rains. It isn't a heavy rain. It never is.

But every night the rain seeps slowly into my mind, pressing down with a steady beat until I cannot sleep. So I sit by the window, seeking company from my glass of whiskey.

Outside, the ocean sings. Through the open window and across from the narrow beach I can see the waves. Their unending death is their song. Their faith relentless.

I fade in and out through the night, not quite sleeping and yet not quite awake. I know to wait. In the small hours of the night, you will be here. Raven hair wet with the rain, you will appear at the far end of the beach. The waves will kiss your bare feet, their dying deeper and their song more urgent. The rain will caress the lines of your face and embrace you like nothing else can. You will stand there in the moonlight, not moving much in the gentle breeze, your eyes searching the horizon. I know to wait. I know the contours of your silhouette, the hope in your searching eyes, the sound of your beating heart, the shape of your legs under your billowing skirt.

I know how it is to want you the way the rain and the waves do.

I don't know what draws you here. Maybe it is the comfort of the rain, maybe it is the song of the ocean, maybe it is the quiet whisper of the moonlight.

I never call out to you. You never turn towards me.

Whose secret are you?

Flowers

--- las flores estan muertas (the flowers, they are dead)

           I had been reading for several hours while sitting in a comfortable sofa-chair on the wood-slatted deck perched on a bluff overlooking the ocean.  In the last light of the afternoon, a steadily rising disquiet led me to put the book away. The words on the pages had awoken an ancient part of me that had lived the stories I was reading. I didn't want to know where the stories would take me; or perhaps I knew already. Troubled, I stood up and walked a few feet to the railing at the edge of the deck seeking shelter in reality.

           The dying light of the sun gave birth to a hazy moonlight barely able to penetrate the darkness. My eyes were drawn repeatedly to the white gleaming churn of ocean waves crashing into the rocky stretch of beach below. The periodic faint sounds of the ocean's heart, the quiet of the birds and the other animals in the dark, the night's air suffuse with the dim glitter of moonlight, all helped calm the turbulence within my mind. Eventually, I turned back to pick up the book I had abandoned earlier, and settled down again on the sofa-chair to continue my reading in the light of a small but fiery gas lamp on the side-table.

            "The flowers, they are all dead."

            I looked up from the book, but couldn't see you. The dark had really settled in now, and the lamp's light barely extended past the chair. Your voice had come from so close-by, but I couldn't find you with my eyes. My mind, on the other hand, you have never left.

            Carefully lifting a dried and pressed flower from between the pages of the book, I held it out, "here is one."

             "Only one of many."

             I still cannot see you. All around me the dark seems to be closing in. I look carefully at the flower. "It is a purple flower with red tears down the middle," I say.

             "Yes... doesn't make a big difference."

(There is a real place, a most beautiful place, called Aspen Fell in SL that inspired the setting of this vignette. If you haven't visited yet, you should.)

Rest of my sins

                 Where I'm from there is a lock and key
                 If you'll be so kind as to follow me
                 I'll show you the way to the rest of my sins.

                              ---- From "Secret" by Missy Higgins

Finally spent, I pulled slowly out of your throat before releasing your pretty face from the clasp of my hands. Leaning back into my chair to rest and to calm my beating heart, I watch you struggle to bring your breathing under control, your sweat-matted raven hair clinging to the sides of your face as you rest it against my thigh. It will be a few more minutes before I am back in control of my own body.

Your note, "I am outside, my love," on the table makes me smile. Shedding my work clothes quickly, I step outside through the glass sliding doors that separate our kitchen from the sand of the beach. The sea is on fire behind you and the last brilliant light of the dying sun caresses the familiar curves of your body as I approach our hammock. You are asleep.

I pause at arm's length, not breathing lest I change my memory.

I reach carefully to brush the hair back from your face without waking you.

God, you are beautiful!

And, you are mine.