Let me leave minutiae behind and sail on the shirt tales of idealism and conviction. Let me flaunt convention and glut on whim. Let my air be a wistful laugh, my sustenance a wish whispered without thought....
Let me bathe in words and wash myself in their meanings. Allow me to scrub away echoes of self doubt.
Let me rinse myself in the sound of your voice....
Few people know the true origins of the yawn, and its purpose. The yawn. Invented by a long forgotten alchemist under the direction of the Emperor Jiang Shang in 1030 B.C. as a method of control against commoners.
Originally, the potency of the yawn was fearsome. Victims were rendered docile for days by just one yawn. However, over time, yawns became less and less potent. People were merely rendered apathized de-stressed. Groups of commoners began organizing yawn parties and forming entire religions around the yawn. In some circles, yawns replaced sex as the ultimate release. (Did you know that some women can take clomipramine and yawn and experience an orgasm?)
By the year 1030 B.C., the Shang dynasty was overrun by yawn-crazed Zhouists and history has always been the same as we have known it today -- although quite different than it otherwise might have been had it had been different. Just saying.
The clouds bring her a rhythmic swishdrum of rain, the way it hisses as thousands of drops hit the square patch of lawn that is home to a set of garbage cans and a laundry wheel. She stares out her window until the momentary magic ends.
"Dance me Until the End of Love is starting," she whispers, fingers light on piano keys, the final drop the que for the swaying to begin, like a breeze of memory moving the voices back and forth.
"Dance me to your beauty... like a burning violin. Dance me through the panic...till I'm gathered safely in..."
Everywhere she feels life swelling around her, never letting go, never a squelch and then a beautiful liquid forgetting. Just go. go. Her own body is just holding on, holding on, waiting for some great release. She gives it nothing, and slowly slowly it breaks down for want of love, perhaps, if not for lack of desire.
No, not for lack of desire. It gets nothing for its wanting. She just let all of that desire stew inside of it, held there trapped like a prisoner afraid to squeak, even in pain. She will do the little things to try and soothe her body, like burn lavender oil and lie on a heating pad. Like an old woman. Hoping everyday that her body won't dry up completely before she gathers the courage to step out.
"I haven't...you know...in a long time...."
Her body is desperate to wrap its legs around a man, her mouth moistens and her jaw falls loose instinctually whenever she thinks of going down on a lover. She misses giving in to invitation. She used to love to give in. She was good at it.
Into the kitchen she goes to slice some plums. To stew them until they release their juices. If she can't, she'll force the fruit to split and spill. What a sly smile she would wear. Such are the things that keep her limber.
Is it the beauty of a night sky dark lit with diamonds?
Or the wilderness of blue-white witnesses staring wordless back across the abyss?
Or the fascination of forever? (For love is a fragment of forever lodged in the heart.)
Is it the need for two when one seems so small?
The desire to touch in the temple?
The vast, lonely field of life in which love, too, is a light amidst darkness? (So many lovers scattered across the black canopy like burning dust.)
Or is it the passion at a star's heart?
The heat of love lighting the emptiness, hurling its ardor across light years of sorrow to tell us something about what yearns within?
The worst thing about waiting is knowing what will happen. Especially when it's good. Especially when it's hot. Especially when it's juicy. Breathless. Unforgettable.
I can smell it. Even if I were blind, with no sense of time, I'd know it.
The leaves aren't falling yet. Everything still looks like an August green. But it's here. And I couldn't be happier. I have everything I have ever dreamed of wanting, and what's more, I am fully aware that I have it.
The high that I'm enjoying, I've been on for like eight months and it keeps getting better. At what point is it considered a natural state of existence? I've never felt this way for so long. Actually, I've never felt this way before period.
The full moon reminds me that I am not alone. Not tonight. Not any night.
It doesn't seem right the way I get to have her every night. She is too good. Too hot. Too far beyond my reach. And yet I can hold her. Every day for the rest of time.
Coming up, I lost my traction, skidded past and slammed into a wall.
"Where are you?" a voice asked.
I glanced around.
"Where are you?"
I tried to stand, to make it to the turn, but kept losing my footing.
"Where are you?" I heard a third time.
I still couldn't get up. It was like being trapped.
"I don't know!" I screamed in answer.
I bolted awake -- facing letters and numbers drifting across a computer screen...
Asleep at work again! And that same dream!
I rubbed my eyes but couldn't clear my head.
No one really understands why it happens or how anyone can function whenever it does. The really strange thing about it is the way it happens whenever I am half awake between transient episodes of lucidity.
I don't know if I am really aware of it or not. People tell me I am. I can only assume, all things being equal in a world devoid of an absolute zero (they say there is but there really isn't), that what is commonly expounded among variants and causalities is nonetheless true.
Like the cog inside my brain. Like the smaller cog inside my cog. I am as infinite as the common cold. Finite as the plated pane of window glass.
I slept like the pre-formaldehyde dead. A hot chick resting at my side, her scent burning through me like a gas-powered lamp... I rolled over and drifted along waves of endless summer....
The first things I noticed -- after the day was finally over -- were the stars. Looking to the heavens, incandescent bodies glimmered and winked at me from a lush canvas of indigo: bejeweled timekeepers, watchers of the universe, billions of light years away.
Oh my God, I thought, my eyes overflowing with the splendor of diamonds and sapphires suspended in space. They’re beautiful....
Nothing but stars, so many of them, infinite and eternal. Dazzling gems spilled upon velvet, blushing flirts, seducing me from celestial thrones. If only I could touch one, feel it in my hand, share in its luminosity....
I reached for one in particular, a great and pulsating jewel, just to see if I could. Movement was not difficult, just…awkward. I could feel gravity’s weight but it acted upon me as if from every direction possible: drawing my hand to where I wanted it to go yet still trying to hold it in place.
Beautiful, I thought once again, reaching for something I was not yet prepared to touch.
An elusive stillness surrounded me, not real silence but rather a low, rushing pulse: a heartbeat; a sound I imagined the unborn hear within their mother’s womb. It was the sound of sanctuary.
My efforts to grasp the heavens continued and for one splendid moment I swore I had actually touched the star I sought: not that I had reached it really, but more like it had reached me....
This novel world, this marvelous environment beckoned but for one instant when I afforded myself a single distraction: a different sort of light, one that was artificial and unnatural. The night sky began to flicker in reds and blues and in turning my attention my ears were filled with something other than the satisfying whoosh I found so comforting. Unrecognizable and unpleasant, these intrusive sights and sounds rudely drew my attention even further away from the wondrous ambiance above me and back down to the lonely concrete earth on which I dwelt....