Know not

I tell her that I know not who I will be. She laughs and tells me that she knows all too well who I am to be, that she has always known. 

That she will change my lonely life. 

I lay holding her in my arms, her head nestled on my chest. Her dark wavy hair falls in a cascade off my side and I play with it, my fingers alternately caressing and teasing apart the strands. I long to see her lustrous dark eyes but I don't break the silence. For a few moments it feels almost real. I squeeze her gently within my arms, rocking her against me, the weight of her within me. Arching my neck to kiss the top of her big forehead, I whisper softly to myself, "baby, let it be me."

Soon we will go back to our lives. But for now, she is mine and I want to know what love is. 

When next she comes back into my arms, I ask her to tell me slowly what I don't know. She looks at me with her softly penetrating eyes and tells me of the mountains she must climb, of the weight of decisions upon her shoulder. I read between the lines and cuddle her tighter into me waiting out her shy apprehension. In time she tells me how his eyes lit up when they met, how he held her hands after dinner, of how he moved her body with his strength and size, of how his roughness melded into her softness and everything was real as his athletic body pressed into hers and they made love in the way she so likes. She tells me how he reminded her of the idea of me. 

I trace gently the shape of my heart on her belly with a finger over and over again as I hold her close. She feels restless in my arms.

Things will happen while they can.

Write me a story

You could be my poison, my cross
my razor blade
I could love you more than life
If I wasn't so afraid

                      -----  From "My favourite faded fantasy" by Damien Rice

"Tell me a story, beautiful man," she says as she settles into my arms and on my lap as we sit on the sofa backed against the wall of windows that look out at the water in the distance. It is twilight. I smile and kiss her dark hair, whispering "you are the beautiful one," as I reach for her hands with mine to intertwine our fingers, squeezing gently.

I tell her about my first love, about how in those college days she made me the man I still am. She wants to know more. I tell her about the drugs, about making love in the stairwell, about intense explorations of body and mind that shone light on the darkness in me. She wants to know more.

I have told her a hundred stories. A story for each kiss, for each caress, for each animal want, for each liquid desire, for each trembling intimate feminine submission from her. I cover her body and mind with a steady stream of lust and words, marking her and binding us together in shared secrets. 

"Tell me a story, my love," I whisper to her as we sway together in a slow dance surrounded by people and music in the club. As we hold each other in the dance, our bodies moving languidly, our hips pressed against each other, she does not answer for several songs but I can feel in the movements of her familiar body her struggle to formulate a response.

In time I feel her relax, and squeezing me tighter in the dance she whispers back, "I cannot do this anymore. I cannot keep writing stories with you. It is too much. It just takes too much from me." 

In the light and the dark of the club, we sway silently together, touching, caressing, as the music changes over and over. 

"I want to write my own stories," she says, tilting her head up to kiss me as the night comes to a close.

Mean me no love

I know you mean me no love. Yet this is how I must pay.  

I dance with you. It has been forever and ever. My arms around you, I tell you that you look like a dream in your gorgeous burgundy dress. You know full well what effect the twirl of your dress has on me. The mirrors on the walls around us call on all our dances past. If I could tear my eyes away from your face, your neck, the swell of your breasts, and look around me I would know their fate.  Reminiscences swirling about us, I nuzzle your neck gently, holding you close as we sway to the distant music. Your heartbeat melds with mine like intertwined fingers. I kiss your hands, lingering on the feel and taste of your skin. 

Desire, shorn of urgency and yet unfailingly potent, wraps around us like the night.

I will not dream tonight. I may not ever.

Outside my mind, reason knocks on the door. I know its warning well. I know what a dance with you portends. But you my love, my everlasting love, are all what my dreams are because of.

Woman Unbound

A woman unbound, she tells me of loves past and future, of great distances and of warmth greater still, and she kisses the tip of my nose. I hold her close.

Love stands near the door. But how is anyone to know? 

I ask her if what was old is new again. She laughs, and I ask her to dance with me. She does not hesitate to take the hand I offer. We navigate the dance floor to find an open spot. She is like the wind, dancing with me, touching me, moving with me. We dance holding hands, we dance embracing each other, we dance not knowing who is around us. We dance. 

I caress her bare arms, she rests her face on my chest, I kiss her hair ever so briefly. Her hands, her hands I kiss, I hold, I squeeze gently and she squeezes back. Her body's scent around me, she tells me things. I ask her things. I tell her that I so want to kiss her neck, but that I will fight the urge. That I so want to touch her secrets, but that I will fight the urge. That I so want to make her mine.

She laughs. God, she laughs at my little jokes. And nothing makes me feel more alive.

I look in her eyes and wonder how I can tell her what I am feeling, how I can tell her the joy that she is. 

Only right

"Now here you go again, you say you want your freedom
Well, who am I to keep you down?
It's only right that you should play the way you feel it"

                                                   -------- From Dreams by Fleetwood Mac 

When I stepped out onto the deck of your house that overlooks the beach, you are already in the shower inside the newly installed glass-walled sauna that occupies the back of the deck. You are proud of the sauna and had invited me to come see it. I pause to watch you. You can see me watching you. The water plays with your glistening skin as it envelops your familiar curves. You play with my mind, washing your breasts with caresses, your hands moving smoothly down your stomach to reach between your legs, and then raising your legs you wash them one by one. Smiling, I move towards the glass door watching the intimate play between water and hands and body.

Grinning playfully, you approach him as he sits naked on a towel on the middle raised bench of the sauna. He grins back, saying "this is a wonderful place for us to play babe." You kneel on the lower bottom bench and use your hands to open his legs to make room for yourself. Trailing kisses on the sweat and steam on his thighs you move your mouth towards the source of his heat, enveloping it with your throat. He plays with your hair while you pleasure him. 

I sit on the floor and lean back against the glass wall. The sauna has exhausted its moist swollen heat. Tired, you sit down on the floor with me, your back towards me. I embrace you from behind, holding you gently as you lean back into me. Kissing the side of your face, I whisper "my love." You tilt your head back to look up at me and reach for my lips with yours.

You sit on his lap on a deck chair just outside the sauna. He has put his clothes back on but you are still naked. You enjoy the effect your body has on him. The fire burning in the urn next to the chair keeps you warm despite the cool summer nightime breeze off the ocean. You drain the Rioja from your glass before putting it down on the side table and turn playfully towards him, saying "come to bed, baby."

The early morning light on what seems to be a clear summer day floods your bedroom and I can sleep no more. You lie asleep next to me. I reach with my hand ever so gently to brush the hair off your face so that I can see you clearly.

Flicker

In my words you must stay.

You flicker in and out of existence on the chair across the round wooden table from me. The lone table and two chairs barely fit on the narrow deck at the back of the cafe, but I enjoy the relative privacy from the crowd inside.

The rain falls all around us, the overhang of the roof keeping us dry. The lush green undergrowth of the thick forest comes all the way up to the deck so that I could touch the rain washed leaves by just extending my arm. The canopy of tall pine trees diffuse what little of the late afternoon light makes it through the rain.

When you come into focus, I hand you the cappuccino I had gotten for you earlier. You tell me about your day. I listen, my mind drifting, distracted by the sound of the rain, by the movement of your unadorned neck as you speak, by the way your dark hair falls atop your bare shoulders, by the movement of your curves as you cross and uncross your legs to find a comfortable way to sit on the wood-slatted chair, by the light in your eyes as you talk to me.

I listen to your day but what I really want to do is to ask your night, 

    "How did you become the woman in my dream?, and 

    How did you make me the man that I seem? and, 

    Who wrote the stories that gave us our past?"

You flicker in and out of existence as the rain deepens in the fading light.

The night stretches

You came dressed in black, with a smile bearing my name. 

You came drenched in memories, bereft of all pain. 

You came bathed in darkness, washed in warm rain. 

I hold out my hand and say, "Come, dance with me." You slow down in my arms, your body in sync with mine as we sway to the music. I touch your face, fingers caressing your familiar lips. I could tell you that I love you, that I have always loved you, but you already know all that. We talk, and in time you laugh with me. Your words fill my world and still my restless heart. Maybe tonight I can keep you near me.

The night stretches, wrapping us in make believe. In the embrace of the warm rain, we walk hand in hand, as the stars beneath us scatter to make way for your steps. The faint lights in the distance retreat further into the horizon. I bring your hand up to my mouth to kiss it and look for your eyes but I cannot see clearly anymore. 

Our love will hold if we can keep the truth at bay.

Silhouettes

Neon on my naked skin

Passing silhouettes

Of strange illuminated mannequins

                                     ------------------- From "Big in Japan" by Alphaville (Ane Brun's cover)

(Inspired by a Steampunk sim... a first steampunk vignette from me)

The periodic whoosh of the massive propellers levitating my airborne home to the top of the cliff had the comfort of a steady heartbeat. The pressure guages in the boiler room that fed the steam to the engine that powered the propellers were doing their job well and I could rest easy for the night. A few feet from where I sat in my chair behind the desk, a wall of checkered windows looked down on the channel that separated the jagged cliff of the island city-state from mainland. Tonight, a dense white fog blanketed the water reducing visibility so severely that no one, not even you, would be able to slip into the city for an attack.

I could sense you, perhaps through  a whiff of your body's scent, before I heard the soft rustle of silk. When I looked up from the maritime reports I had been studying, you were sitting on the chair across the desk from me. Your right leg pulled up on the seat, your left leg swinging free, your ornate purple-hued oriental silk robe open as you leaned back with a glass of red wine in your hand. I traced your curves with my eyes, smiling, wanting to tell you that one day you will be mine. 

The only reason I did not reach for the revolver in the top left drawer of my desk is because I knew that you were not really there, that my mind was playing tricks with me. 

A little bit yours

You're not mine anymore
But I'm still a little bit yours

                                                ---  from "A little bit yours" by JP Saxe

I wake up to the feeling of you laying on my back, your hair caressing my face, and your kisses on the back of my neck. I must have fallen asleep on my stomach while stretched out on the picnic blanket under the shade of a big umbrella in the lazy Sunday afternoon sun. 

Giggling, you press into me and wiggle your chest and hips on my back. Smiling, I roll over using my hands to keep your body on mine. Grasping your hair from the back of your head, I gently guide your face up to mine and kiss your lips. 

"There is no better way to wake up than with you in my arms."

You stretch out on me and reach for my shirt buttons. Midday stretches into late afternoon while we explore each others bodies and minds again. It has been years together. It has been years apart.

I show you new tricks I have learned to add to our pleasure. You laugh in delight. There isn't anything that I miss more than your delight. 

It is evening by the time you recall that you are not mine anymore.

Olive Bread Afternoon

By the time we finish the apple pie on our little table outside the cafe, I have given the newspaper to you and picked up my book. But my mind isn't on the book, it is on you. The sun is now high enough to be clear of the buildings across the canal. It is one of those lazy bright weekend mornings when sunlight suffuses everything with a brilliance without being blinding.

I study you as you read the newspaper. Your bright eyes, the unruly wisps of hair on your forehead, the curve of your mouth opening in time for the coffee cup you raise to your lips every now and then, the pale skin of your neck and throat moving as you swallow the coffee, the visible collarbone at the base of your neck and the beginning of your shoulder that I have kissed a thousand times, the unbuttoned top half of your soft white silk shirt moving with your body as you lean forward for the coffee revealing the curve of your right breast, your left elbow resting on the table, your hands holding the newspaper aloft at reading distance. All so familiar and yet it stirs an inevitable desire in me that I fight to subdue.

When the sun is at its peak in the sky and we are tired of reading, we head back to the airbnb stopping first to buy provisions for lunch at a bakery near the cafe.

As you put down the bag with the olive bread, the fresh wine-red grapes, and the triangle of brie cheese on the kitchen table, I envelop you in my arms from behind you, kissing the back of your neck, my hands reaching under your shirt for your breasts. You squeal in surprise and then in pleasure as I cup and squeeze your breasts and pull gently on your nipples. I burrow my face against the side of your neck, kissing urgently, biting downwards towards your shoulders. 

Voice hoarse with desire, I whisper "I want you. I have always wanted you". 

You reach back with your hands and pull up your skirt. "I know, baby. I could feel your eyes on me".

Lust took its course as I tear into you with my need, pinning you down onto the kitchen table, in time savagely emptying into you from behind. 

The urgency now tempered, I pick you up in my arms and take you to the couch to take care of your needs more slowly and gently in the striated light of the afternoon sun coming in through the window blinds.

Afterwards, as you rest I go back to the kitchen table to pull the olive bread apart into chunks and grind some fresh black pepper and sea salt onto extravirgin olive oil in a shallow dish. I think about the grapes but instead pour two glasses of the unfinished Malbec from last night. Pulling up a chair to sit next to you, I feed you lunch as you lie propped up on the couch cushions.

The farmer's daughter

In this strange world where we want to be misled and we want to misunderstand, I tell you a story.

I take your hands in mine and raising them to my lips, kiss them softly. As the music plays, its Latin rhythm coaxing us into dancing, I pull you towards me. Your black dress twirls as you give in to my gentle touches directing your body with the music. 

We dance in the courtyard of an ornate high-ceilinged marble building with multiple tall arched windowed doors on all sides. The sun is low on the horizon and its rays light up the clumps of tall grasses that grow in the marsh surrounding the building. In the easterly warm wind, a sprinkling of brightly coloured flowers wave on stems tall enough to peek above the grasses. At one end of the courtyard are the now rusted metal statues of a man and woman frozen in a dance, her body arched backwards as his body leans onto hers to kiss her neck, their arms enveloping each other.

"Did I tell you?" I ask, as I pull you into an embrace within the dance.

"Tell me what?" you respond, looking up at me, the warmth of the dying sun reflecting in your eyes.

I lead you in and out of my embrace as we dance in the bright white light spilling out of the building onto the brick courtyard.

"That we are in the middle of nowhere, Argentina. That on a moonless rainy night long long ago on the road that runs parallel to the overhead electric transmission lines in the distance, the road that you can barely see from here, a general's car broke down. He walked towards the only light he could see and when he knocked on the ramshackle house, the farmer's daughter opened the door. It was love at first sight. The general married her and took her away to the city. But in time he had this beautiful building built for them to dance in when they came back here."

"Is this true or are you just making it up?" you ask, smiling as we grind gently against each other in the recurring transient moments of closeness within the dance.

I smile back at you, hands reaching to caress your lips ever so briefly just as you twirl out of my reach in the dance. 

"Their children put in the statues here as a memorial to them when they died. Rumour has it that when the sun is low on the horizon and the easterly winds are just right, the statues come alive and you can see them dancing here in the courtyard in the light that spills out of the windowed doors. She wears a black dress and anyone who has ever seen them says she looks lovely in his arms."

You rest your face against mine as we sway together. 

"That on dark and rainy nights you can see the farmer's daughter using the telescope on the upper floor balcony to look for the headlights of the general's car."

"How beautiful and sad" you say. 

In the light of the low sun, I lean into you arching your body backwards to kiss your neck, our arms enveloping one another.

Handwriting

As I drift slowly back from sleep to wakefulness, I become aware of my head resting against the sloping surface of a wooden drafting table. I can see the strange light outside of the open french doors from a kind of diffuse grayish-blue twilight sky infused with rain. The sound of the rain and its smell coming in with the light breeze slowly seeps into my consciousnes. I let it soak in for a few moments. Looking around with my eyes, head still resting on the table, I see that I am in a small sparely furnished room. There is a mostly empty bookshelf in the corner. A few feet from the desk is a couch facing the open french door. I can see the wet wooden railing on a balcony outside. I try to recall what is outside the room, to remember the view from the balcony, but my mind draws a blank.

Pushing back against the table with my hands, I find that I am sitting in a leather swivel office chair with rollers. I must have fallen asleep against the drafting table. I lean back against the chair to study the table. On the bottom left, there is an upright purple fountain pen in a quaint gold pen-holder with an engraved black base. A bottle of indigo ink stands beside the pen. On the top left are a sheaf of loosely bound papers and a brown leather journal. To the right of where my head was resting moments ago, there is a single sheet of thick off-white paper folded in half under an ornate jade paper weight. Hanging on the wall opposite the french doors there are a few detailed topgraphic maps mounted in solid brown frames. I stare at the maps for a while. Most of them are of beach-front properties. They look vaguely familiar.

I close my eyes and lean back further against the chair, trying to recall where I am and what I am doing here. Nothing comes to mind.

Eventually I give up and reach for the folded sheet of paper...

"I have long been gone, my love. It has long been over."

I stare at the page for a while. I cannot tell if it is my handwriting or yours.

Embrace

When I wake up next to you, it is still raining hard and loud.

The sky is now dark though, and in the thin light seeping in from the wrap around windows of the little one room house you had built for us I can see the heavy raindrops beating down all around us. I turn my head to look at you, your face a few inches from mine, as you lay on your side facing me. A flash of lightning illumimates your face and the room around us and you stir briefly at the sound of the accompanying thunder. I move closer to you, whispering softly so as to not wake you, "Did I tell you that you never leave my mind, my love." Reaching with my hand, I caress your face ever so lightly, brushing your dark hair back from your face, and then down your neck.

Lightning flashes again and in the pulsing light I see your face in my hands as you kneel in front of me and I make love to your throat. In the ensuing thunder, I lean forward to kiss your throat softly atoning for how rough I had been to it earlier. I slip the cover back down your naked body, eyes lingering on the curve of your collar bones and down the curve of your visible left breast. Lightning flashes again and in the flickering light I see you straddling my hip, your body moving up and down as you moan loudly and I reach with my mouth for your nipples. "Baby," I whisper softly as the thunder claps down around the house. I lean in to you and kiss your lips, pulling your body gently into mine, waking you up for my need.

When I wake up next to you, it is still raining hard and loud.

The sky is brighter now though, and through the wrap around windows I can see the heavy rain all around us. I turn my head to look at you, your face a few inches from mine. You are awake and looking at me. I smile into your eyes and move closer. You reach for my body and pull me closer to hold me against yours. I go back to a kind of warm slumber in your embrace.

I barely hear you when you ask in a low voice, "Am I more than an addiction?"

Inescapable

I turn to look at you. It is late evening and you are laying next to me in an adjacent beach chair. You are on your side facing me, and I hold your gaze, searching your eyes. When you look away with a barely audible sigh, I reach with my hand to caress your dark hair back gently from your face. In the diffuse evening light, your skin is luminescent. My eyes trace down your neck, lingering on your collarbones and then down to your breasts barely covered by the open translucent white silk shirt you are wearing. I feel the moist gentle pull as you turn your face slightly to take my index finger into your mouth. I watch the curve of your lips as you suck on my finger, your eyes locking onto mine with a desire at once familiar and inescapable. I reach out with my other hand and pull you on top of me.

The waves are now loud enough that I can no longer keep them out of mind. The moonlit churn of the waves washes up to just a few feet away from my feet. In the very far horizon out on the sea, I can make out the shape of what must be a large ship. The breeze has picked up a bit, though it is still very warm and comforting. I can hear some faint voices and laughter every so often but their owners must be quite distant. There are no clouds in the sky and in the half-moon the stars are bright and feel close. It is a beautiful night, but I cannot remember how I came to be there on that beach.

Would you?

I try and steady the row boat as you step into it and then taking your hand guide you to sit across from me on the passenger side. We had found the boat nestled in among the lotus leaves and tall gangly yellow flowers by the grassy edge of the small island with the temple. The turquoise water is brilliantly lit by the dying sun, and you are delighted by the koi fish that swim in the clear water around the boat. I can see the clumps of tall bamboo on the little island behind you swaying gently in the breeze. The butterflies we had disturbed in walking down to the boat flit about us. I smile into your eyes and pick up the oars to set us off into the water.

Our surroundings are so beautiful that we forget to talk for a while. I see a pink flowering cherry blossom tree growing out of a rocky arch abutting a waterfall and steer the boat towards it.

"If you could change the way I feel about our past, would you?," you ask.

I look at your face silently letting the boat glide past the waterfall. You look so beautiful, sitting there across from me, your dress gathered under your legs. I resist the primal urge to hold you in my arms.

"Did I tell you?," I think silently to myself, "That I have always loved you."

"Would you?," you ask again.

Song

I realize what you are to me. You are my song, my poem.

Now most of us don't live our song, but everyone has one. And you are the spirit of my song, its heart, its mind, its music, its words.

And you know the best part? You don't even have to live in this song with me, for all of this to be true.

In the gentle breeze, the sound of the waves from across our beach barely reaches us as we lay propped up against the great big tree at the corner of the meadow in the back of our house. My back against the tree, your back against my chest, I hold you in my arms as you sleep. The impossibly tall-stemmed flowers that have overrun our meadow surround us like so many sentries warding off reality. It is twilight and the sky is suffused with brilliant colors from the setting sun.  I reach to caress your raven hair back from your face, and whisper "Happy Birthday, my love."

Shards

See me dancing in the rain
Shards of glass in my back
Trails of blood, my love

See me drinking whiskey on the porch   
Dreams of diamonds and rust
Don't fall for me, my love.

See me laying in our hammock
Arms holding you in the wrong way
It's all far too late, my love

Words on a page (2)

In the space
between my words
you live, and
we love, you and I

I leap ahead
from words to words
lover mine
you fall behind

Sometimes, I go back
to words from long ago
and find you there,
dreaming

Words on a page

In the rain, there is a whisper
of a moon rising high
and miles and miles of love
washed away with the tide

In my dreams, there is a quickening
of the blood in my veins
a thousand cuts from sharp desires
bleeding words on a page

I didn't hear you leave

You were right, of course

It is 3 in the morning and the world is empty but for the stars above. After a long night of caressing each other's bodies and minds with our words, we just lay there, spent and entwined on our hammock.

"Do you remember the time when...?" I say, reaching out to caress your hair off your face.

You stir on my body and tilt your face up to look into my eyes. "What time?"

I play with your hair, holding your gaze, willing the hammock to continue rocking us gently in the warm breeze off the water.

"The time, all those years ago, when I asked you to marry me and move in to my house?"

You embrace me tightly and whisper, "I loved that house with the crescent moon bay."

Your head back on my chest, we listen to the periodic murmur of the gentle waves.

"Do you remember your response?", I insist gently.

You don't answer.

"You said that if you moved in with me, it would be the beginning of the end of our relationship."

You look up at me but don't say anything.

"You were right, of course."

two simple thoughts

If I talk real softly
will you hear me
but not wake up
so that I can suffuse
your dreams with
my love, my love

If I tell you again
that you are the light
that brightens my mind
will you shine even more
and erase all the darkness
in me, my love

I don't know how

     I don't know how, but I still love you. Will you come to me?

     There is magic in your eyes. The diffuse glow of the setting sun lights up the warmth in your eyes as you smile. I pull you into my arms and onto the hammock on our beach. Our bodies entwined, I talk to you for hours in these summer evenings. In this world of make believe, I tell you that I love you in hundreds of different ways. Words of love, words of fantasy, words of feelings wrapped up in impossible dreams, words of wishes written with layers of untold meaning. I kiss your eyes and tell you that I lust for you. I tell you things. I ask you things to explore the innermost recesses of your mind through your answers. Even when you are in my arms, I long for your mind. In the background I play the saddest romantic songs I can find to quench this undying thirst for you, but they don't work.  So I explore your body with words trying to get to the essence of you. The more I seek, the more I find. I drink from the feeling of you wrapped inside of me. I cannot get enough. So in these summer evenings I hold you in my arms and talk to you.

      I don't know how, but I am still addicted to your mind. Will you come to me?

Infinite absence

The sun sets quickly and brilliantly at this time of year and I had come out of the house to stand on the beach to watch the dying sun light up the water in fiery reds and purples. In the clear air of the late evening I can see for what seems like miles in both directions and there is no one else on the unending sand. The occasional shrill cry of a lone bird in the far distance behind me is the only disturbance to the otherwise meditative periodic rhythm of the waves lapping at the sand all along the shoreline.

Standing at the water's edge with my feet just at the point where the waves give up and recede, I get lost in the sounds and in watching the brilliant colors of the sun on the water slowly dull into a more uniform twilight.

In time, I lay down on my back on the beach and wait for the stars to herald the coming of the night.

Your absence surrounds me, an infinite absence stretching all along the water's edge. It suffuses my thoughts as an only friend. What trick of mind is it that conjures up an absence?  How strange to be besotted with an illusion I have created myself.

I have looked back in time, I have looked far into the future, and found no evidence of you. Yet your absence is in my present, always. What form of insanity this is, I cannot tell.

Can one know something solely from its absence?

At nightfall, the stars come out to shine on me. 

Wish me

I walk up the path to your house, or at least to what I think is your house. The large number of cars parked on the street and onto the driveway suggest that it is the house with the party.

The bright yellow lights spilling out of the windows of the front rooms illuminate the steps and the front porch. I pause and look inside but don't spot you among the beautiful people in colorful sweaters holding drinks visible through the windows. When there is no answer to my knocking, I open the front door and let myself into the din of the conversations. It is warm inside the house, a welcome relief from the cold dark outside. When I take off my coat to find a place to hang it, I don't recognize the brown leather coat, handsome but well worn, that I am holding in my hand. I feel inside the pockets but they are empty.

"The coat closet's full, I am afraid. You will have to put it on the pile of coats in the dining room corner."

"Thanks. I was wondering what to do with the coat," I say, and extend my hand to the woman with the directions. "I am Michael, a friend of the birthday girl."

"And I am Stephanie. Also a friend of the birthday girl." she said, suppressing a giggle to shake my hand. "Come get a drink when you are ready."

I watched her weave her way back through the folks hanging out in the passageway, hoping she'd walk up to you.

Not caring to figure out the coat anymore, I deposit it in the dining room and head towards the kitchen. I don't recognize anyone that I see.

A glass of red wine in hand, I walk around to look for you in the rooms filled with conversations.

"Aren't you going to wish me?," you ask from behind me.

"I have", I say under my breath before turning around to face you, "I have wished for you all of my life."

Magic

Turn your magic on
To me she'd say
Everything you want is a dream away
                                     --------------------  From "Adventure of a Lifetime" by Coldplay

The din of the restaurant around us fades as my eyes focus on your lips. You are telling me something you are excited about, but your words flow past me. I am enthralled by the light in your eyes, the way your raven hair frames your face, the way your mouth shapes the words you are saying, your unadorned neck moving ever so slightly as you speak. I echo the smile in your eyes and reach for your free hand with mine, caressing it ever so slightly. You pause to put a forkfull of pasta into your mouth and I raise my glass of wine to you. With a clink you touch your glass to mine and we both enjoy the wine for a bit.

"You weren't listening to me, were you?"

"I was listening to every little movement of your face."

"What am I going to do with you?," you say, laughing happily.

"I know exactly what I am going to do with you. When we get home, that is." I reach across to caress your lips briefly.

"Michael, be serious!"

"I couldn't be more serious, my love. It is your birthday and I have a nightful of dreams to make."

till you

I see your name
but you are not there
and I feel the loss
of all the words left unsaid
till you...
love me

From JJ: Pool

(Found another vignette by you!)

It was gorgeous today, so I went to the pool.  I sat in the sun for a long time, just enjoying the heat on my skin and the sound of the water.  I ordered a Screwdriver.  You know that's what I like to drink.  I thought of you as I lay there in the sun - nothing in particular, really, just my mind remembering moments with you, like the first time you took me to Apollo, and how I felt the first time I saw what you look like, and what you sounded like when we made love.

I needed to go to the bathroom, but I didn't want to go into the pool bathroom, so I went to the powder room on the upper floor.  It was deserted in there, except for me.  I guess it was thinking of you and the sunlight and the alcohol, but I was so horny, so wet.  I reached down between my legs and used my fingers to make myself cum while I bit into my lip so I didn't cry out.  All alone, in the bathroom stall.

I miss loving you and fucking you and kneeling to you.

After you read this, delete it, and we'll pretend I never said these things.

By JJ, many years ago

From JJ: Her story

(I found this story written by you.. from so many years ago! It connects most directly to this vignette)

I’m in your arms when you say, “I want to take you somewhere special, a favorite place of mine.” 

My eyes narrow slightly and I tilt my head.  “Like the place we met?”

You laugh and I feel warmth in my chest and other places.  “No, not a dungeon.  This is a beautiful place, it’s called Apollo.  The kind of place you take someone on a date.”

In moments, we materialize surrounded by green.  Trees form overhead against a bright blue sky and flowers trace paths over rolling hills.  A park.
You take my hand.  “Come, it’s this way.”
 I follow behind you, my willingness already a natural response. 
“There it is.  Come, sit.”

I watch you walk to a chair set up amongst the trees.  Not an ordinary chair, but exotic, masculine, as if created for a warrior.  You sit with practiced ease, stretching out your long legs.  I stand before you, unsure of what to do.   “Click here,” you instruct, and when I do, my body settles on your lap, my head on your shoulder, my legs draped over yours.  An intimate position, one with the promise of greater intimacy to come.   Again, I feel warmth spread through me; nervous desire and something harder to name.

You stroke my hair and whisper into my ear, “We fit perfectly together.”

I feel your fingers run over my calf and along my thigh.  You’re so sure of yourself, but isn’t that what I find most attractive about you?   I remember our first meeting.  It had been brief, one of hundreds of encounters in this place, but in those few minutes I could feel your intensity drawing me in.   “Why did you contact me?  I didn’t expect it.”

“I didn’t plan to.  I normally wouldn’t, but…”

“What?”

“I kept thinking about you.”  You draw a finger over my lips in a gentle caress.   “I’m not sure why.”

Your shirt opens over the dusky skin of your chest and I slide my hand inside, needing to touch you.
“I didn’t expect to hear from you because I read on your profile about your partner.”

You look me straight in the eye.  “Yes.”  No excuses.  No denials.  Just, “yes”.

“So, am I to be your mistress?”

Your laughter is deep and genuine.  “You are to be my lover.  I know this.”

Anger flashes through me at your presumptuousness.  “You already have a lover, one you claim to adore.”

“I did adore her once.  I still care for her, but she isn’t right for me.  I can’t be my true self with her.”

“What does that mean?  What is your true self?”  The silence lasts so long I almost ask again.

“There’s a darkness in me, baby.  I’m afraid it might frighten you away.”

I can’t deny my shiver of anticipation.  We're the same, you and I.  That's the bond we share. “Trust me, it won’t.”

--- By JJ many years ago

Nights

What I am to you is not real 
What I am to you, you do not need 
What I am to you is not what you mean to me
                            ---------- From "Volcano" by Damien Rice

It is the same night. Same as a thousand other nights. And I cannot find sleep.

In the silence within the rain outside I cannot stop thinking about what I have lost. So I go out to the porch facing the waves on the beach with my bottle of Talisker for company. So many years have now passed since we met and parted. It is a story that I cannot forget and that you won't remember.

The rain is particularly vicious tonight, beating down all around the house. There is a palpable disquiet in the air. Even the waves seem subdued, washing listlessly up the beach. Surrounded by water, I sit drenched in remembering. Without you my love, where else can my mind go in this world? There is no desire but the one for you. Draining my glass of whisky in one fiery futile attempt to quench my longing, I lean back and close my eyes and wait to hear your footsteps.

It is the same night. Same as a thousand other nights. And I can't find my way to you.

A million times

There's no time for us
There's no place for us
What is this thing that builds our dreams,
Yet slips away from us?

                                ------------- From "Who wants to live forever" by Queen

        A thousand times these stories unfold like memories in my mind. A thousand doors to walk through to you. A thousand stars in the night sky as we lay entwined in the warmth of our beach. On and on I love you, and on and on I lose you.  A million lies, one with every breath, one with every step in this world. A million caresses on memories of your face, a million kisses for the taste of your lips, a million times you tremble in my arms. A million times I reach for you, a million times you withdraw your breath, a million times I become your lover. The sea stretches achingly into the horizon, but there is no touching the sky. On and on I tell you of my love, and on and on you find the mysteries in my words.

        If there is a single truth, a singular thought, it must be that one of us does not exist. I cannot tell which one of us is real. 

Fade

Some kind of light into your darkness 
Colors your eyes with what's not there 

Fade into you 
Strange, you never knew
                                             -------- From "Fade into you" by Mazzy Star

Give me a reason... give me a reason to not dream of you.

I stop, standing still just inside the glass revolving-door hotel entrance, to watch you as you sit on the deeply-cushioned white-leather couch flipping the pages of some glossy magazine. I can see you half-glance at the pictures on the pages as you keep an eye on the dark wooden check-in counter. It isn't quite 3 pm yet. You are early, as I expected you would be. I cannot help but smile as I see you reach for the glass of white wine from the table by your side. Your familiar raven hair cascades in small waves down to your shoulders from under the wide-brimmed straw hat you are wearing. You are wearing a dress, a bright floral one. I know you wore it to please me, and that makes me happy. I follow the muscles of your lower left leg with my eyes as you swing it in time to the music in the hotel lobby, on to your bare arms from your hands up to your shoulders and pause at the movement in your neck as you drink your wine. Your neck is my fetish.

I cannot wait any longer and stride over to the check-in clerk. My back to you, I speak louder than usual knowing that my voice will catch your mind.

I wait until no one is in front of the elevator before getting into one.

"My god, Michael," you say as you glide into the elevator as I hold the door open for you, "I have waited for this day for so long".

I pull you into my arms as the elevator door closes.

Raven hair

If you are lost
you can look
and you will find me
time after time
               ------   "time after time" by Cindy Lauper

In many different worlds, many different suns set across the water from our house on the beach. As I sit in my favourite rocking chair on our back porch with a glass of whiskey in my hand, I cannot recall whether I have lost you yet in this world or not. It is a subdued kind of evening, with the gentle repetitive sound of the waves broken only by the occasional cry of the hawk that nests at the far corner of our land. The blood red of the setting sun has suffused the waves with an amber that matches the color of the fire in my glass. I drain the remaining whiskey down in one gulp and reach for the bottle of Talisker on the rickety three legged stool on my left that you have long tried to get rid off in all these worlds. Smiling at the memory, I pour myself another shot and settle back to enjoy the rest of the sunset.

I awaken to find you sitting in my lap caressing my face. It is barely dawn, but I can see the light from the smile in your eyes. Your raven hair loose on my chest, I reach to embrace you into me.

"Are you lost, my love?", you ask.

No end

Love me, love me, say you do 
Let me fly away with you 
For my love is like the wind 
And wild is the wind
                                    -------  From "Wild is the Wind" by David Bowie


          In the thick rain, my car's headlights are barely a glimmer a few feet ahead on the treacherous road. Yet I know this winding narrow lonely mountain road that takes me to you so well that I drive on it with wild abandon.  The overhang of the craggy mountain on the left side of the road is invisible in the dark of the night though I can feel it's ominous heavy presence. The car's engine is eerily soundless against the insistent metallic rush of rain on the roof of the car. The rain is trying to keep me from you. I had given up on the windshield wipers long ago and so I accelerate into the blinding rain, daring fate to do its worst. The feel of throwing the car around barely seen turns in the road is exhilarating. I will get to you. I rev the engine into the climb, prepared to not brake for anything. There will be no stopping.
 
         I know this road will come to an end, but I don't want it to and so in this constant rain I close my eyes and drive solely through memory of the road ahead.

         I hear the sound of mandolins.

Crime?

Is it a crime?
Is it a crime
that I still want you
and that I want you 
to want me too?
                           ------ From "Is it a crime?" by Sade 

In the far distance beyond the volcano, a drum beats out of time.

I caress your face with my breath and whisper, "tell me something from the dream that I am in."

In the moonlight, I hold you close in the dance, swaying gently. Everything fades into you, into the feeling of you in my arms.

It is not that without you I have reason to complain about my life. It is just that without you my life does not really feel mine. Tonight, in this very dance, you could say the words to stop the sun from rising and we can find our home in the never ending night of this world. Who needs other worlds and days beyond that?

In my arms, you can rest your face against my chest and tell me about all the other lives you have lived. I will kiss your hair every now and then and gently pull you back into the life we have together.

In the far distance, a drum beats out of time.

Her face

How I wish, how I wish you were here
                                              ------- Pink Floyd
 
Lately my mind don't feel like mine.

There is a photograph in my shirt pocket that I don't recognize. I have taken it out and looked at it many times through the evening but I cannot recall who she is. It is a black and white photograph, not faded though it is a bit tattered. Whoever she is, her smile is radiant and her eyes open and inviting. Just as for the camera, it is hard for me to focus on anything but her face. 

When I have seen the face for long enough that I can reproduce it in my mind, I go out across the beach to stand at the water's edge. It is night and in the cold of the rain the water is indigo dark with the churn of the quiet waves an ominous frothy charcoal blue. There is a shadow on the murky horizon despite the ascendant moon.

I have been in this night before. I have been.

I pat my shirt pocket and the photograph is still there.

With my feet on the liquid sand, there is nothing to hold on to. So I close my eyes, imagine her face and let the cold steel rain wash over me.

Flowers for your birthday

Written while listening to Aurora Aksnes cover a beautiful Leonard Cohen Song

It is four in the morning, late in November.
I sit at the desk by the window of our bedroom.
In the darkness, all I can think about
is that I cannot send you flowers for your birthday.

From the window, I can see the silver of the waves
crashing across the quiet beach. It is raining outside.
The song I have been playing in the background is stuck in an everlasting loop.
I like the song, but it makes me sad.

If you ever come back here
for my words, or for me
what new can I possibly say to you?
Shall I tell you that I have always loved you?

Shall I tell you that in my mind
I see you dancing with me on our beach?
It is late in November, it is late at night,
and I cannot send you flowers for your birthday.

Tell you

I am going to tell you.

I am going to tell you how I feel.

I am going to talk to you through the night. In my arms, on our beach, as you lay with me in our hammock just out of reach of the waves, I will let go of whatever it is inside me that has kept me from telling you all these years. There, under the moon and the stars, I am going to tell you how I feel.

I am going to brush your dark hair back from your face and trace your lips with my fingers. I will lean forward to kiss your lips and down your neck, as I have done so many a time. Your hands in mine, I will hold you close to calm your trembling heart. There, in the light of your smile, I am going to tell you how I feel.

I am going to take you back in time to our first dance floor. Surrounded by the warmth of the torches, among the crowds we will dance again, alone alongside the silent strangers. Your warmth against mine, your body moves in response to mine. There, to the rhythm of my beating heart, I am going tell you how I feel.

I am going to tell you how I feel.

I am going to tell you.

Not as it would seem

From across the piazza, light from the nightclub spills out onto the cobblestone courtyard through the big glass window that wraps around their bar. It is a familiar place, but it is late in the evening and I need to get home to you.

As I turn away to keep walking, I notice the woman sitting on a bar stool at the long thin table pressed against the window, summer dress to her knees, bare legs with sensible black shoes swinging to some internal rhythm. There you are, drinking wine and reading. I cannot help but smile at the incongruity of you reading in a club with all the music and dancing behind you.

As I stop and watch you, you are absorbed in the book, your raven hair loose and covering the left side of your face, the hint of a smile on your lips. From the distance I can not tell what you are reading. Your neck adorned with a silver chain, the top couple of buttons of your dress are open and as you lean into the book, there is just a hint of the curves I know so well.

You smile, turn the page, and take a sip from the wine glass. 

It is late, and I need to get home to you.

Parched

Night falls without sound. 
In the thin rain, parched memories (of you)
dig deeper into my mind for sustenance.

Flickering neurons, and my eyes
create holograms of you from
the glitter of moonlight on rain.

Your hand in mine, memory's children beckon
and in the thin rain we walk deeper into
this ancient game of mind versus matter,

Night falls without sound.
In the thin rain, I think about standing
my ground. You hold my mind.

Is that it

    I hope in your dreams
    that he loves your eyes
    like I did...
                      ....just for a while
                                          ------ Is that it, my friend  by Damien Rice

    I am lost in your laughter, forever seduced by the way your body moves as you laugh. Sitting across from you on our back-porch in this bright sunlit late afternoon I have brought you roses for your birthday. And your favorite chocolates. I am keeping the main gift for later. As the waves from the sea off our beach house serenade us, I tell you that after our friends have all left this evening I would be yours for the night, that you could ask of me to make all your secret fantasies come true. I cannot help but laugh along with you as I listen to you tell me what you will have me do. The brightness of your eyes, the curves of your lips as your words paint pictures of the night to come, the call of your skin to mine, the desperate hunger in my desire to taste your entire body, an all too familiar mix of raw addictions I have long struggled to come to terms with.

      I pull you gently by your hands off your chair and into my lap. Your back to me, as I embrace your body tightly into mine I whisper into your ears, "Did I tell you, my love?"
 
     You tilt your head back to kiss my chin, and wait for me. I smile into your eyes, and say, "Did I tell you how restless my heart feels without you?" You angle your head further back to offer me your lips and I envelop them in mine.

     When the spray from the waves at high-tide lapping up the beach wakes me up, it is night. As the surroundings seep slowly into my consciousness, the expanse of the sea looms larger than usual in the low moonlight. I look back at the house. It is unlit and dark. I silently voice "Happy Birthday, my love," and get up to walk back to the house.

     As I open the screen door I almost miss seeing the roses laying at the threshold to the house. 

Away from me

By the time I remembered the glass of whiskey on the side table, the ice in it had melted. The shot of cold Talisker burned my throat with familiar fire as I drained the glass empty. From my rocking chair on the back porch I had an unobstructed view of the setting sun. Mesmerized by the gentle bobbing up and down of the waves of liquid gold on the horizon I watched the sun set for a while. When it was finally dark, I reached back behind me to switch the porch light on and turned back to the book you had given me long ago. I had started reading it again earlier in the day, seeking comfort in its familiar words. As I opened the book, a neatly folded piece of paper fell out. I froze for a few seconds, remembering what was on the note...

I didn't sleep last night. All I could think about was you and me and the years we've been together in our strange way. And the more I thought about it, the madder I became. When Sam discovered our relationship, you threw me under the bus, Michael. You left me to deal with it. And I did. And you swore you'd never contact me again, but you did. Why, Michael? You were already seeing your girlfriend when you contacted me, so why did you do it? My reaction to yet another fake fucking email address from you, was correct. I was pissed and I should have stayed that way. But obviously, I'm an idiot where you're concerned.  What really kills me is that I didn't get a clue when you came to my hometown and didn't bother telling me. You could have told me about your girlfriend then, Michael, 4 months ago, but you didn't, you just kept talking about us getting back together in SL. What are you, some sort of fucking sadist?  You're the one constantly babbling about real life and SL, but you're the one who can't seem to keep it straight. You didn't even have the balls to actually tell me the truth, no, more fucking TYPING.

Let me be very clear - if I ever want to speak to you again, I'll let you know. Until then, you stay the hell away from me.

          JJ

 I poured myself another shot of whiskey, before bending to pick up the paper.

Come

Come lie to me.

Come tell me that you will be mine. Tell me that the words you have said to me were not the echos of imagined whisperings in my fevered mind. Tell me that what has happened, will happen. Tell me that I will know and love you before I lose you.

Come be my guide through this world of make believe. Together we will walk this narrow road and take all its turns. Tell me that our destination is the foreign land that you call home. Tell me this big untruth, so that I can stop nursing the little truth inside my heart.

Come be my guide, come be my love.

Come lie to me, so that I can love you.

Sanity

I try not to sleep, for sleep brings dreams, and desire, and rain, and you.

In the twilight, rain comes down in a deluge of fragments. The empty road stretches out ahead. Through the rain I can see the thick forest on both sides. There are no lights, no signs of habitation, not even in the distance. I stand still for a while on the side of the road, the wide brim of my hat keeps the rain away from my face but the rest of me is completely drenched. I don't know where I am. I don't know where to go.

These years of rain, or is it these years of dreams of rain, have washed away all the reality in me.

When I feel your hand in mine, I turn towards you and in silence we hold hands in the rain at the side of the road. In time I pull you into my arms for an embrace, you resist briefly but then yield and burying your face into my chest, you whisper "Save me".

All my dreams

Whatever it is that you want to make me into, I have already become.

Sleep is but a whisper that I cannot hear, and so I sit on the edge of our bed staring out at the distant white foam of the waves caressing our beach over and over. In the low tide, the dark expanse of sand outside our window extends far into the deep night. In the dim light from a lone naked bulb under the overhang atop the entry door of our cottage, the silvery drizzle of rain fills the window with a ghostly curtain fall.

But for the sound of the rain, the world outside could be a photograph. One that I cannot forget. One that never leaves your dreams.

I can hear your gentle breathing on the bed behind me, and if I close my eyes I can imagine your familiar curves rising and falling with every breath.

In time, the night deepens and the bed draws me again to its embrace. As I turn to lay beside you, you ask, "How long are you going to take all my dreams?"

Wish you were

The fine spray of mist-like rain on my face brought in by the wind through the open window woke me up. I must have dozed off while reading, feet up on my desk and the chair pushed back at an incline. I lay still, holding onto the book on my chest, and watched the curtains billowing into unreal shapes as I tried to pull myself out of the daze that unexpected waking from deep slumber brings.

Outside, the steadfast sea unvaried in its cadence sang its lonesome song.

When I finally turned back to open the book, the bookmark was a photograph of you. I looked at your photo for a while before remembering that I had written a note for you on its back. Turning it over...

My Love,

    There has been no other want, since I have wanted you.  You are my desire. All of it. *Smiling.* I loved the picture. You are so, so gorgeous, babe. I love the pose, the demure turning of your face, the lowered eyes, the play of light and shadows on your neck and cleavage, your hair, the legs, the bottom of the shirt hiding the part where your legs meet. And the curve of your breasts, the nipple peeking... god, it literally made me hard at work. A beautiful, alluring picture, my love.
   
Michael

 I wish you were.

Stay

I just can't get you out of my head

          --- a song by Kyle Minogue

I had been waiting for hours for the sun to set, but the far horizon had captured the frail sun just at the edge, freezing its warmth inside pale reflections on the low waves. The breeze coming off the water had gradually gotten cold, and yet I stood at the water's edge in a fevered daze. The steady periodic sound of the waves had bit by bit stripped off all the defenses in my mind.

I stood motionless for a long time,
a simpler kind of man
than the one you had once loved.

An unsteady gust of wind pulled me out off my silent reverie. Across the water's expanse the remains of the dying broken sun still glowed in a million undulating golden tears.

As I turned back from the water to make my way to our house on the beach,
you whispered, "I want you to stay."

Maze

It is not my friend, this rain, for it makes me dream of you.
I stand still, looking out over the water at the brightly-colored reflections of the lights from the city on the low hill behind me. In the moonless night, there is no one on the beach. Across the desolate dark sand the unrepentant waves sing their dying song while inside of the maze in my head I follow the forlorn thread of desire. In the unravelling past I never get to the end of the thread. I never get to find you. In this barest whisper of rain, I just can't get you out of my head. 

I will find my way out, I swear.
I will find my way out of this maze inside my mind.

Wordlessly

I reached for the glass balanced precariously on the wraparound railing of our back porch. The ice had melted and the cold whiskey went down smooth in a familiar trail of fire down my throat. Leaning back against the rocking chair, I closed my eyes to let my senses turn inwards. The wind had died down long ago, and the sound of the waves drowned out the whisper of warm rain that fell all around me on the beach and into the far horizon.

I can hear your laughter as you race ahead of me to the hammock on our beach. I pause just beyond the range of your outstretched arms as you lay in the hammock and reach for me. Smiling, I look at your face lit up by the rays of the evening sun. Your eyes hold mine. Under the clear blue sky I stand still, eyes caressing your face. In time, you get up and stand beside the hammock, my need apparent to you. Standing facing me, your eyes dancing with mine, you take off your clothes. Slowly, wordlessly, you kneel on the soft wet sand and looking up into my eyes offer yourself. I move towards you.

The splash of the warm rain on my face brought me back to the beach. The wind had picked up again and in the night sky the baleful moon carried on its fruitless struggle with the moving clouds. You stir and I can feel your face against my thigh. Smiling into your eyes, I reach down to caress your hair back from your face.

It's true.

Nobody loves me, it's true.
Not like you do.
                      -------- From Sour Times by Portishead

It is the last night of the year.

From my chair near the open window, I can see and hear the waves on the other end of the narrow rain-drenched beach. The moonlight is strong tonight so that the drops of rain are like jewels in the night sky. I have been nursing my whiskey, little sips to keep me warm in the cool sea-laden breeze coming in from the window. The half-empty bottle of Talisker sits next to the flowers in a vase on the low table to my right. The billowing sheer white curtains dance with my chair, alternately caressing and then shying away. 

I lean back, close my eyes and think of all the dreams where you have let me love you.

When I wake from my reverie, the wind has quietened a bit. But the rain, it never ceases.

It will be midnight soon. Why are you so far from me?

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?"

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.

Is this the place?

He deals the cards to find the answer  
The sacred geometry of chance  
The hidden law of a probable outcome  
The numbers lead a dance 
                                      
                        -------- From "Shape of my Heart" by Sting

I know where you are. I know where to reach you. I know how you feel and what it takes to make you feel. I know what to do, to make you mine. I know.

Maybe I am wasting my years. Maybe chasing the idea of you all this time is more real than I can ever be. Maybe I can go back to the end of regret. Maybe.

I sit in the car at the top of a hill, engine still warm but silent now. It is a clear moonlit night and I can see for miles around me. The trees, they find reasons to hide in the unbroken view. Nothing dwells here, no lights, no smoke, no sounds. I sit for long as the night deepens.

I reach for the ignition key.

"Is this the place?", you ask from beside me.

Your name

But sometimes every word has been used,
and there is nothing left to do
but hold the one you can't have in the sweet arms of a tune.

                  ------- From "Sweet Arms of a Tune" by Missy Higgins

When the evening shadows lengthen, when the rest of the world goes quiet and the soft sea-breeze gathers courage and whispers through the curtains, I wait for your name.

Your name.

We play the long game, you and I. Maybe I will know your name, and maybe you and I will know what to say. We know the rules. And so I wait.

When darkness settles, when the flickering flames do their ghostly dance and the song that is buried in every movement comes alive, I wait for your name.

Spend my time

I don't know why I spend my time
writing words that you'll never read
with meanings that strain credulity

I lay beside you in the hammock on our beach, my face resting against your bosom, your beating heart filling my world. You are asleep and so I tell you that you have a beautiful smile. I tell you that I won't close my eyes, lest I lose you to a dream.

In the fading light of the sun, you lay rocking to and fro in our hammock waiting for me. I pause on our porch, watching the last rays of the sun bathe the contours of your body. Setting down the glass of Talisker whiskey on the wooden rail defining the porch, I walk down the few steps of beach to join you on the hammock.

I open the door to our home, walk in, and see your car keys on our kitchen table. Smiling with anticipation I shed my briefcase and shoes, loosen my tie, and pour myself a glass of whiskey. Two ice cubes in the glass, I turn the music on for the speakers facing our beach and am ready to dance with you. As I step onto our porch, I see the trail of clothes you have shed on your way to our hammock.

I call out your name, but when I look at the beach you are not there.

With every passing month, every passing year, it gets harder to write you into my life, but I swear by the words still left in me that we will dance together again at sunset on our beach.

Unrequited

Be in my arms,
be in my dreams,
be my love unrequited.

Another year is ending. With a fire crackling beside us, we sit on the carpet in our living room facing the wall of windows overlooking our beach. It has been snowing continuously for several hours now and so there is a beautiful quiet all around us. I lean further back against the pile of cushions propped up on the wall near the fireplace, and you lean back against my chest, my arms around you, my face resting against your hair. My eyes linger over your familiar curves, the rise and fall of your breasts, the flare of your hips, the dip of your silk dress as it drapes your thighs and legs. It never fails to stir desire, seeing you.

I reach for the glass of whiskey on the carpet next to us and you raise your face in anticipation. Smiling, I give you a sip, the cold of the ice inside tempering the fire of the whiskey. I watch you swallow, and then cup your face tilting it upwards to kiss your lips, tasting you and the whiskey, tasting you and me and kisses yet to come. 

The snow surrounds us and we sit and watch it fall in silence. Squeezing you deeper into me with my arms, I rest my face gently against yours and wait. It will be midnight soon.

Beautiful Rain

I am wrapped in the deeds of the words that have made me.

It is a beautiful rain. I turn towards you to tell you what you already know, that I love the warm rain in the city, but you are not there. The drenched empty half of the bench to my right glistens blue, then yellow, then red, and then back to blue again in harmony with the flashing neon lights in the Pizzeria sign across the narrow cobblestone street.  The small city garden behind the bench that bustles with children and their mothers during the day is silent and unmoving in the night. It is a moonless darkness and there isn't a soul about. I look leftwards, down the hill to the river. On the two sidewalks, evenly spaced gas lamps are shrouded in a fine mist, their feeble light barely reflecting off the wet cobblestones.  Bright light spills out of a few street-level windows from the row of two-story brownstones that hug the street on both sides. I sit there and watch the familiar scene.

When I turn back towards you, I know you have been watching me for a while. I reach for your hand and slide my body on the bench to be closer to you. The warm rain washes down your face. When I look into your eyes, I can see our little world reflected in your unspilt tears. I reach for your face, cupping it with my hands and whisper, "I don't remember, love. I don't remember what I am supposed to do."

Ribbon

In the dead of winter, I live at the water's edge.

Autumn leaves are long since buried under several feet of snow. Barren trees stand tall in silent vigil. There are secrets here that hibernate in the harsh winter, but all one has to do to survive is to not disturb their sleep.

Shrill cries of ravens had broken the deep quiet and woken me up early this morning. When I came outside and looked, there were too many of them to count. I watched them fly in chaotic circles around the last standing wall in the ruins that shadowed our home. Their battle was not mine. Against whatever evil that drew them here, whether they emerged victorious or perished, their cause was not mine. So I turned my back to them and walked down to the frozen beach. I would wait things out at the water's edge, near the unbreached sanctuary of the vast ocean. I stood still for a long while, hands clenched inside my jacket pockets, striving to drive the world out of my mind. 

"Why won't you come when I call?"

I turn around to look at you. Wild eyes, skin pale as the dead winter, disheveled hair, the skin tight top of a black gown ending in a flared feathered skirt with a long train that hid your feet, the ribbon in your dark hair matching the color of the bright red trail of blood in the snow behind you. 

"All I heed is your heart," I whispered softly so that you would not hear, and turned back around to the shelter of the waves.