When We Began Again

When I am old I know that I will still remember the sound of how we began again. Though my eyes may dim, my heart may slow, I will never forget the sound of the ocean, hundreds of miles away and yet right outside my window. In my tiny third floor bedroom, gabled and tin roofed, we began again. One night became two, one day became several, and an idea became real. We lay there, you and I, every night and that summer we were blessed with rain, and the sound of the sea.

My bedroom had little more than a bed and a dresser, and a lamp. Almost claustrophobic, the walls slanted in to the shape of the almost Victorian roof. If it weren’t for the two windows it would have been little more than a walk in closet. Bringing you in there, opening my room, my heart, and my bed, became even more intimate because the space was so confined. Like unwrapping the smallest present under the tree to find that good things really do come in small packages. Finding you in this way, again, was tremulous… as I waited to see if this time something true could grow from the seed of passion’s past.

I remember when the rains started. I was gradually wakened that night to the sound of it falling hard on our metal roof. The sound was constant and strong, a steady thrumming that blurred together into a wall of sound, alive in it’s intensity and auditory pulse. I love the rain, I always have. I remember changing into my bathing suit, quick like a bunny, so I could run around the lawn, standing under the pounding crash of the gutter spout, assaulted, shrieking, and loving every minute of it. This rain brought back those memories in a rush, what it felt like to be young and in love with being silly and free. The storm pounded the windows and walls and I reveled in its fury, safe in the dark haven of your arms.

That morning I woke before you, as I always do, and to my dismay the rain had stopped. In its stead I was graced by what can only be described as the sound of ocean waves. For a moment I was confused, though I don’t normally awake dulled or disoriented. When last I checked, the ocean was two and a half hours away. I couldn’t make sense of the ebb and flow that flooded the room. I shook you awake, “Listen, it sounds like the ocean!” I said, and you agreed. I gathered the sheet around me and knelt against the headboard, flush against the window frame, staring out at the early morning in wonder. You know I can’t let things rest, I just have to know. And suddenly, I did know.

Outside my window a maple tree leaned in close for a kiss, it’s leaves (on any other day) whispering against the screen, marking the seasons the way they always do. Each leaf glistened, soaked, the rain must have stopped only minutes before. The wind whipped up, roaring through the trees in a low moan. The leaves slid against each other, a mad wet friction, and that was it. That was the sound. It rose and fell, long and slow, like lovers with all the time in the world. I lay back down beside you and we entwined ourselves, like the leaves, surrounded on all sides by a wall of illusory sound and a very real joy in each other.

And so, when I am old I know that I will remember the sound of how we began again. How that summer we were blessed with rain, and how we lay together, surrounded by the sound of the sea.

Crystal Kisses

Sometimes I think of snow as the ice-cold kisses of Winter. When the Earth is being covered in a blanket of adoration, the Ice Maiden kissing the seemingly lifeless body of her sometimes lover. She touches chilled and delicate lips to her beloved, to no avail. It is in the nature of her very love to drain the vitality from the object of her affections. Retreating inward, her lover slumbers and waits for warmer wiles. Softer than feathers, her kisses melt against my own upturned face and lips, tiny drops of melted longing. My tongue darts across burgundy lips and laps up the love it finds, rare and pure like ice wine.

It is one of those moments in time when you feel as if all the world is empty, and you are the last person on earth, or maybe the first. It’s rather like being present at the birth of Time. While an honor, yes, also very, very lonely. Moments such as these, when the power sings across your skin and you’re afraid to move for fear of shattering the crystalline perfection, are meant to be shared later with a lover – in the dark – spoken of in hushed whispers and reverent breaths. The air has a weight and it presses in on me with a firm strength. Perhaps I’m being tested, my ripeness being ascertained. Ready, yes… for what?

The field I stand in is wide and the silence is almost as loud as the ringing in my ears. But if I close my eyes I can imagine you, just beyond sight, waiting for me to wish you into existence. As if… as if I could only gather all the warmth that is seeping from my body, roll it into a ball, and butterfly kiss it… winging it’s way to you. Once there it would fashion itself a form, a blank canvas of a man, that your spirit might take it for a home. Your essence giving life where before there was none, bringing light where before there was only darkness and the surety of possibility.

When I open my eyes I see nothing but the crystal woods and fields, and no trace of you at all. A flicker of movement catches my eye and my heart races in my chest, thinking it might be you. Against the leaden sky a crow takes wing, and I pray it carry my love to you. For on wings as swift as those, perhaps you might one day hear word of it. Until that time I am held still, in stasis, or at least until this moment passes. It will pass, as such things inevitably do, but until that time I am bound by rapture, by the cold clarity of a need that knows no boundaries.