A long way

A long way from love.

I took shelter from the wind at the base of the rain-wept cliffs. About twenty feet away, the fragile dark gray sand of the beach held back the advance of the high waves from the sea. In the dark of night, the feeble moonlight showed little but the frothy despair of the waves all along the shoreline. There was no one, no structures, no lights, nothing to break the long stretch of cliffs and narrow beach in both directions as far as the eye could see. Even the rain was nearly invisible, though I could feel it against my face and hair. There was meager shelter here against the cold of the wind and so I moved as close to the wet face of the rock of the cliffs as I could. When I looked up at the sky, the ominous mass of unmoving clouds stood low almost touching the cliffs up above. All around me there was the sound of the waves, of the wind, and of the rain.

I have seen this rain before. I have felt this rain before against my face and body. I have walked this shoreline before. I had walked many such shorelines to look for you. I never find you. But if I do find you, I would offer you my eyes for I no longer want to see our long way from love.

Color

When I am with her,
my mind unravels,
and convoluted thoughts
unspool into straight lines
taut with urgency.
    
        On this very spot by the river, I hold you night after day and we sway with the music. The gleaming water flows as if it has an urgent destination. Far in the distance, red and gold fires race to the inky sky. At our feet, silvery starlight falls in glittery dust. Belief and intentions swirl within our arms. The white mist of your breath against my neck, my mind is saturated with dreams of you.

        You dance with me in waves, repeatedly drowning me in desire and then washing away in doubt. Again and again, for you I fall.

When I am with her,
I can taste my own lies.

Your Eyes

When I woke up, the sun was getting ready to lay down with the horizon on their bed of liquid fire. Perhaps it was the feeling of the warm water from the gentle waves under my bare skin lifting me up ever so slightly with each push to the shore that woke me up. Or perhaps it was the early warning of dread that the impending night brings. I look to my side and you lay next to me with eyes closed, a thin veil of wet sand clinging to your naked curves. I lay silently, watching, absorbing the sounds of the quiet around us, hoping that reality would sink back into me, but I just couldn't remember how long we had laid there on the beach or how we came to be there.

I turn towards you, to study your familiar face. Streaks of wet raven hair on your forehead and cheeks, moist intertwined eyelashes adorned with a few grains of sand that sparkled in the low red light, your lips parted ever so slightly. My eyes linger on your lips, memories of kisses suffusing a warmth deep inside me. Your neck, your beautiful neck that I had made love to with my kisses and with my ballooning desire so many times. I reach out to gently caress your neck with my fingers, tracing its length and then down to your high breasts. I am drawn to you, physically pulled towards you. I fight the urge and instead bend forward to put my lips close to your ear and whisper, "I don't know what the night will bring, my love."

I see your eyelids flutter, the rapid rise and fall of your sand crusted breasts as your breathe sharply and struggle to wake up. I hold your hand.

When you wake up, you turn towards me and reach out to caress my face. There on the beach, we lay on our sides facing each other and explored each others eyes silently.

In the last rays of the dying sun you whisper, "Your eyes. Why do your eyes show you things that do not exist?"  

Maybe you are...

Are you?

I lay down on the road, waiting for yesterday.
Your words wash over me.
Rushing past, they don't see me.
I sink deeper into the road, but your words
they peel my eyes open.
I cannot tell if the wounds are in my eyes
or on the words rushing over me.
They have found the bloody tears of tomorrow,
your words. I still wait for yesterday.

No trace

I held your hand through all of these years
You still have, all of me

           —— From “My Immortal” by Evanescence

It does not fool me, the rain.

Its drumbeat surrounding our little cottage on the beach does wake me up though. When I finally give up on sleep and get up to sit on the edge of the bed, the outside dark fights its way into our bedroom through the window. It plays its part too, the dark of the beach. I look back towards your sleeping form. You lay on your side facing the direction I had slept in until just a few moments ago. The thin white sheet we used as cover in the heat of the night has slipped uncovering your bare shoulder and all the way down to the curves of your hip. Our love-making has left no trace on your body. The dark takes my place on the bed.

I study your face. It holds the secret to what it all could mean.

“Do you believe in what you dream?”, I ask in a whisper, reaching back to caress your face ever so slightly. You don’t wake up.

When I look back out of the window towards the sea, I can see the rain beating back the waves as they rush our cottage. I am lost in the world you have built around us.

“We will never find our way out, will we?”, you ask. It is now light outside.

I take your hand in mine and gently squeeze it but don’t look back towards you.

Right words

I don't expect it to ever stop raining, not now that you are gone.

It was late evening by the time I reached the bottom of the dark wooded hill that was my home. There I had stopped in abrupt surprise on finding a brightly-lit meadow in front of me.

I had followed the flash of color that was you through the thick undergrowth of the woods for hours in the mid-afternoon rain, never quite seeing you fully and never quite catching up to you.

Now as I look across the threshold from shadow to light, I can see that you are not alone. There are people around you, beautiful people in exotic clothes. Though I can see the others in the happy throng, my eyes can't leave the light of your smile. You drift, slowly mixing in with the crowd, greeting friends and strangers. There is music in the clearing, someone is singing, and at the edges of the crowd there is dancing. I can see the whirl of motion and can hear the clink of glasses as well as laughter mixed in with conversations, but I am transfixed by the celebration in your eyes.

Standing at the edge, one-step away now from your brilliant world, I close my eyes and let the dark rain of my world wash over my upturned face.

When I open my eyes, you are standing at arm's length in front of me. "Are you thinking of the right words to say?", you ask.

What it all could be

With you.

Slowly I came alive to your warmth near me, your usual subtle fragrance seeping through into my consciousness. I must have fallen asleep in my chair while working in the late afternoon at my desk and now in the dying light of the evening sun you came to me dressed in a skin-hugging riot of color and the faintest of smiles on your face. Sitting on the desk, you are so close to me as I lean forward to kiss your bosom. You embrace my face into the curves of your breasts as I kiss them hungrily wanting to drown into your softness. You play with my hair and whisper to me as I slowly trail kisses down your stomach. I cannot hear what you are saying for I am still waking up inside your willingness. My hands find your legs, reaching under your dress for the silky heat of your inner thighs. All my senses flooded by you, my mind soaks in our escalating twin desires. You continue to whisper and moan, and drunk on your arousal I wake up to get lost in you.

The sun has long-since set and the churn of the waves glows in the silvery starlight. We sit a couple of feet apart on two wooden chairs on our porch on the beach. You have slipped your flimsy dress back on but nothing else and in your unbuttoned state I struggle to get back control of my mind. There is a quiet between us, a silence that comes from knowing what is to come, from not even having to say the words anymore.

“I need to know,” you say and then pause.

I close my eyes, and let the periodic crash of the waves count time.

“I need to know if you can fall in love with me again?”, you finish.

The beach dances the waves to their demise, over and over.

My mind

I can't take my mind off of you
Just can't take my mind off of you
I can't take my mind off of you
Just can't take my mind off of you
I can't take my mind...
My mind... my mind...

                   -----From "The Blower's Daughter," by Damien Rice

        At night I sit at the end of the wood-slatted dock that extends several feet into the river, legs dangling over the frayed edge and into the murky water. The cat that frequents the dock and dreams of fish has learned that I am no threat and stands at the edge too, motionless but ready to leap into the river at the first hopeful sign. Everything here is muted, like an old faded and slightly out of focus crime photograph from a dusty police storage cabinet.  Even the air seems subdued, not as in a calm before the storm, but as in a storm that knows its time of glory has come and forever gone. Dark clouds in various shapes of disarray move around listlessly in the great river of the sky. The river at my feet, however, flows as if it has a destination. Full of the melting dark in swollen eddies of gray and black, it runs away from me into the embrace of the distant mountains. Behind me, the breeze waits, venturing tentatively out of the quiet of the forest every now and then to caress my back and hair.

        Suddenly the cat darts away, escaping into the forest. I keep my eyes on the river.

        "That damned cat. It never really liked me, did it?"

        "It is the wind. It remembers you," I say.

        I don't look back. The river moves, but all else seems motionless. We wait several minutes in silence.

        "You could try being happy", you say.

        I smile but keep my eyes fixed on the water.

        "He is very happy, you know," you say.
    
        I wait for a few moments before turning around to look at you. "And that is good, right?"