Let me tell you a little story….
You know I've been thinking lately of past summers sensations --- telling the stories of all the meet-cutes and danger we put ourselves in, that Time has made into just charming stories --- I'm telling them over the sounds of the night bugs in the humid low-lying hideaway by the Bay, sipping down a cold one, and leaning into a creaky wooden chair with one arm still on the cold metal table, leading my audience in.
We're all laughing and wanting more.
All this caused -- 'cause it's flooding back in a typhoon talking of "first-times", -- and seeing him again in the dim, smoky light of a bar, as the smell of the first skin I knew so well comes closer -- sending such shivers of nervousness that no stiff drink will ever calm, still. (What was I saying??)
All these years gone by, and we look at each other with the most thunderous silence. Can't remember what a single word has ever meant, --- what's the point talking of sounds? None would have the same abstract longings conveyed as one look -- knowing everything in it was of each other's force & taste -- knowing me deeper than makes logical sense. Take me however you like (I'm thinking).
Was it doom we felt back then? The timing so wrong -- but the pull ever harder to fight. So many nights in the past, that I'm strangely breathing up --- like the heat rises from the grass each morning ---
….every one started with his smirk, and my loosing it in laughter --- pointing across the dance floor to pull me onto it…locking the kitchen door to start a water fight and tugging off the soaking-wet clothes and lifting me up by the waist…running down the stairs to get away from the party…skinny-dipping with a bottle of whiskey…the pictures he was always taking with my camera as I hid....whispering nonsense & hints in the darkness of a movie theatre…finding ourselves to be the last ones left awake on a couch with cards and beer…and him taking my old ring and proposing. Always pretending there was more time. Everything he ever whispered into my ear forgotten now but how I believed it so.
We were kids then, but we felt so old & wise.
….every one started with his smirk, and my loosing it in laughter --- pointing across the dance floor to pull me onto it…locking the kitchen door to start a water fight and tugging off the soaking-wet clothes and lifting me up by the waist…running down the stairs to get away from the party…skinny-dipping with a bottle of whiskey…the pictures he was always taking with my camera as I hid....whispering nonsense & hints in the darkness of a movie theatre…finding ourselves to be the last ones left awake on a couch with cards and beer…and him taking my old ring and proposing. Always pretending there was more time. Everything he ever whispered into my ear forgotten now but how I believed it so.
We were kids then, but we felt so old & wise.
So now it is --- when I watch some smoky dance floor by the water's edge -- where there's a live band blasting "Georgia" (or something like it) into the summer night, while the partners dance in an intoxicating back&forth so slowww-oh, so wet with lover's sweat and anticipation --- I remember us. Dancing the same way. I remember following wherever you led -- and the night you told me to leave you behind and never look back.
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