You pose before you run. You always do.
You glance at me from the corner of your eye. You stick your little fingers straight out. One foot rises to the toes.
You charge ahead. Straight into lion country.
Your arms are going; you move them like you’re a super hero.
Your little shoes squish into the trail.
And here I come, running in my boots after you.
Your laugh trickles out like music: over the stream, dancing across the leaves, chasing chipmunks through the vines. Your sound is you, the light of you, and it drifts up into the air and jells with the light filtering down through the canopy.
When I catch you, I look up and see them:
There are colors. Shimmering above us.
I look down to find you blinking back at me. I can see the trees reflected in your eyes. I can see the clouds, the sunlight.
Everything alive. Everything in you.
You smile the way you smile when I scold you, and in you I see all the wonder I’ve ever found in all the beautiful places I’ve seen.
You pose, your little fingers stretching out, and run.
Off into lion country.
And I go after you,
wondering how I feel,
how I could ever tell you.
They smoked in bed together and went walking in the middle of the night. They said very little. Neither knew the other that well. In the morning, she told him she had to get ready for work and left.
“Can I see you again?” he asked.
“Sure,” she said.
“Tonight?”
“Not tonight,” she said, kissing him once on the cheek, “I’ll call.”
Safe to say he was sure he would never see her again. He wallowed in it. Made waffles for breakfast and drank dark beer while the batter stuck to the sides of the iron. His roommate came a lurking.
“Uh oh,” she said, “waffles.”
“Grab a plate.”
“What happened?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Yeah you do.”
“She doesn’t want to see me tonight.”
“So?”
“Just wanted to.”
He pouted as the little red light on the waffle iron flipped over to green. He finagled the fresh waffle onto a plate with a fork and slid the plate across the counter to her.
“Thank you pal,” she said, smiling. She tipped the syrup bottle and drizzled the waffle.
“Don’t be so happy.”
“Don’t be so miserable.”
He scooped more batter on.
“Hey,” his roommate said, “I’m going to a show tonight.”
“Who’s playing?”
“The usual.”
“Eh.”
“Cool. You’re going. Starts at nine. Don’t make me late.”
With that, she took her plate and disappeared into her room.
He mulled outside in the line with his roommate and her friends. He’d never heard of the band and the first place he went once he made it through the doors was to the bar. He fetched two beers for himself and finished one before he found his seat. Circles of friends spoke around him, and he was satisfied to stand and watch them all awhile. The space was small, the ceiling low, it made all of those voices hum together and rise around him. Blue and purple lights lit the stage. And then a spotlight fired on stage right and a girl emerged.
He felt a chill soak over his toes. He glanced down to find spilled beer on his shoe.
He shook his head, blinked his eyes, and looked back up at the stage.
It was his girl. The girl from last night. The girl he met in the city and fell in love with and who walked under the stars and who broke his heart in the morning. She wore eyeliner and dark lipstick. Her hair was up. She introduced the band and they began to play. And she began to sing.
A peculiar thing happened to time in that hall. Every person of that pulsing crowd became part of the walls. They were still there, still around him, but they became silent. Even the sound of the instruments grew dull and distant. All were slow. And her voice, the girl’s voice, was more vibration than sound as it grew across the room the way a vine grows, reaching up and out until it touched him on the chest. Maybe he was imagining it, which meant he imagined the lights too, the ones firing off in his chest, flashes of brilliance alighting inside his ribcage.
He should have closed his mouth, but instead he stood in awe for the first time in his life. Slack-jawed in true amazement. He saw her for what she really was, the hero at the bow of a dragon ship, plunging through violent seas. She lifted the mic stand and he saw her carrying her friends up snowy mountains, those ones from the stories all fraught with peril. He saw her in the quiet times too, singing dirges for funerals and getting everyone through the dark minutes that come with loss.
And he didn’t know it but he was smiling when her eyes found him, and she smiled back with the grin of a hero.
He was on his way out with the crowd when a hand grabbed his arm. She pulled him forward and kissed him in the same way she had that morning.
“Hey.”
“Hey.”
“Some job.”
“You like it?”
“Yea, hell yeah.”
“Cool.”
“So,” he said, “you’re touring?”
“Yeah,” she said.
“Oh, cool.”
“I’ll be back.”
“Yeah, for sure.”
“Really,” she said, punching his arm, “I will.”
Part of him was mad about it. Part of him pictured all the places she would be, the people she might know, but then she kissed him, and those same fires lit up again in his chest. He only thought about how he loved standing next to her. That he loved it when she kissed him. And he stared like a fool into her eyes until she smiled and turned.
He cut out from the bars early that night and went a’ walking with his eyes upward. He consulted with the stars and felt as happy as he was sad.
“She’ll come back,” he thought.
Flames leapt up from the burners and licked the sides of the iron. Soup purred in its pot and greeted their eyes. Bread sliced. Mushrooms bathed in oil changed color. Hands reached out and jostled the treasures over the fire, finely-tuned muscles etching lines in their arms as they worked. Clouds blew on as wine climbed from its bottle and the cool heat of starfire burned above them. Hearts beat and voices resonated. Songs sang. For all they wanted, they forgot. They were happy enough to be a great host. Laughter grew from the table and mixed with the cold of the night air above them, fighting back at the stark empty of space and reaching for communion with the dots of brilliance that burned so far away from them. They took turns looking up at them, the stars, and wondering.
The night would slip away in their memories. There was smoke over the mountains after all. But there would be more nights. They would keep toasting, all the way to when some of them would pass from this world of skies and ovens and screen doors. Then a withered finger might point to this picture and remember how it felt to be alive and together and young at that table.
From this high up, the motorcycle glides silently along the curve of the road. He can’t make out the shape of her on its back. Can’t read the emblem on the side of her helmet. It roars, he thinks, it must, for she’s going so fast but he can’t hear it. He curses the machine. It’s more of an animal in his mind. An old friend gone rogue. He closes his eyes and he can feel its controls under the curve of his fingers, under the tips of his boots. And he can feel her arms tighten around him too. The fields were empty then, long mounds of dirt with trees at the breaks, and the air was cold. It made for the best sunrises and sunsets with the winter haze gleaming all the way from the horizon to fall across her face. There’s something earned about cold sunrises, he thinks, but he’s stopped in his tracks. He sees her face now as it was then: Her quiet smile under the roar of the engine, the wind tearing at her hair—she buries her nose in his shoulder. He was stupid to look back. It was dangerous. But he had to.
He opens his eyes and the road is empty now, and he hates himself for thinking when he should’ve just watched. He waits for some kind of shift in his mind, some confirmation of his spirit that this is life now, that he’s alone. He thinks that something has to change, but he’s on the hill just as before, and the colors of the world are all still the same. The hike back down to the house is too short. He lingers on the edge of his property, watching his house as though some monster rests inside. When he opens the door, it’s even worse, it’s empty. He considers getting a dog, but the idea only racks him with guilt. His dog, their dog—thee dog—died some years ago. To get another would be an insult to a legend.
He stands in the doorway and breathes. He wonders where she is now. Tries to guess her progress. Wonders if she’s smiling. “She must be,” he thinks, “it’s a beautiful road.”
And he climbs into his house that feels like a cave now and sets a kettle on the stove and lights the burner. He sits in a chair in his quiet house and wonders if he’ll ever leave. It’s only hours before his head grows too loud, his house too full of the end of them.
He longs for the coast and packs his bag, his heavy coat. He sets his things by the door. He’s scared she’ll come back and he’ll miss her so he leaves a note. There are a thousand words in his head and none of them will do. He settles, and grips his pen:
Gone searching for you where we met. You know the place, hiding from the winds on that wild coast. Behind that rock where you smiled and we kissed. You know the place, where we jumped into the sea and shook warm in the sun.
He stops. He’s already rambling. He finishes without knowing how. He writes:
I love you.
He sets the pen down and anchors the note on their little table by the door. He takes one last look at the house, at his chair, at the pictures on the walls—her pictures. There is too much reflection here, and he shuts the door. He goes out on the road.