I’m looking through a deep blue diamond.
This is mine.
What’s inside speaks for itself.
I will tell you what I see.
And then I’ll say no more.
One night we’re standing in an apartment. Moonlight blue covers over all of it, the white canopy bed, the walls, the dark wood of the nightstand, my suit and her little black dress. At least, I think that’s what she’s wearing. It’s difficult to see clearly; I think her hair is dark, and her dress is black, she’s wearing a necklace and a bracelet, but the details are so hazy.
I’ve been trying so hard to see this moment, trying for thirty years.
We’re staring out the window, watching the city’s collage of dark and light, basking in that blue. She takes my hand. We kiss, and I’ve been remembering that kiss even though it still hasn’t happened yet, since before I had any reason to imagine what a kiss feels like, not to mention a kiss like that. She guides me to the bed, and it makes sense.
(Will it ever make sense?)
It’s written somewhere deep within me, and I don’t know who wrote it.
I follow the horizon.
It fades forever and ever when I move.
There’s an old country house, in a red-gold forest. It’s sort of like my great-grandmother’s old place, long since torn down, but here the paint is white, not as much peeling. The scene feels almost like one of those kitschy folk paintings, but less hokey, not idealized; instead it’s bittersweet. There’s melancholy here. The scent of fall is in the air. Windows are left open, white curtains are fluttering in a ghostly, wandering breeze. I feel her here, but I don’t see her, and I don’t see myself.
The house is empty.
I’m standing on the shore, back at this beach, the source of so much happiness. The ocean always calmed me. The sea was a promise, a feeling of infinity. In the distance, in that vastness of possibility and peril, I see her rising out of the waves.
I was so much younger then, even though it still hasn’t happened.
She was so tall, and she captivated me; I’d known her nearly all my life, but I saw her differently one day.
(Did it make sense under the red wolf moon, at midnight, on Friday the 13th, just before the plague?)
The sight of her body, dripping, statuesque, glowing in the late afternoon sun, not some marble-sculptured ideal of perfection but simply her, perfect as she is, brings me to my knees.
She moves towards the shore; can she even see me? Does she know I exist? Is it salvation that forces the water to part around her colossal legs to grant her passage, or my doom?
I was on the couch, it was late, dark, in a tiny, empty little ghost town, and I thought of her and tears were in my eyes.
She’s in New England; she’s married, and has a child.
I rarely think of her now.
Near a lakeside I am chased by thieves in uniform; her body changes, grows taller than the tallest of them, lengthens like a snake, her eyes and teeth become serpentine, and she rises to her full height, taller, bigger, stronger than anyone I’ve ever seen. A few words and the sharpness of her voice and her stature sends them running. Her skin is hard and her grasp is venomous, dangerous, but I want to take the chance. I need to take that chance.
Her growth lodges something in my heart that I cannot remove. She’s dressed like anyone, like any woman, and yet she grows into something else. She stares down her adversary; she treats that devil like a toy.
Later that night (surely it was the very same night) her golden hair is wild and she reclines in a pool and I’m wearing white, and I want the night to go on and on.
A black and white film is caught in the projector. Her poster hangs on my wall. I hope she’ll notice.
Inside her pocket, it’s a different kind of warm. Her breast, pressed against me, the beat of her heart, lulling me, warmth like nothing I’ve ever known is all around me. It is through me as it is around me, a command and declaration in each heartbeat: peace. She’s in charge, and this is her order. I cannot but obey.
For a moment, I thought this might be happening. Was I right? Will it happen again? Will it happen at all?
How much that was good was too good to be true?
How much was good anyway, if it wasn’t true?
Every morning we made breakfast and sat at her kitchen table. We were close. But not for a minute were we lovers. Even then, it was painful. It hurt to leave the table.
I broke things off, she cried, but she was only words.
She sat down in my car as I tried to eat lunch and told me she would keep waiting.
I felt sick.
She’s left me in the corner of my cage. She’s making dinner. Will she remember to feed me? Am I just being paranoid? Did she remember that I’m here, as she’s watching that show she likes? The cage was inviting, when I arrived. I think I’m growing, though, with every meal she forgets to feed me, and soon the cage won’t fit me anymore.
(I said fit, not hold.)
Waiting out the storm, I’m surrounded by mountains and thick, imposing trees, and time. Her footsteps echo like thunder through the mountains. The Redwoods snap like matchsticks. Fields of raven hair are tossed by the wind, her eyes so piercing they obliterate the dark. Somewhere, hiding, she finds me, she takes me home, and she is home.
In her hands, sheltered from the city lights, she steps and skips through countless dreams. Tonight is hers. Mine. Ours.
Kissing her, I lose myself. The softness of her lips on mine, getting drunk on her touch as she gently explores me, and invites me to explore her. The time is right, this time, if there is a this time, a balance is struck. Every inch of her is a loving sadist, lovingly tormenting an adoring masochist within me, by simply being that beautiful, all of it communicated through those eyes, letting her in. I hope she will consume me the same way, and I worry that it’s not so; she silences the doubt with all the passion and intensity of a predator pouncing on prey. She won’t hear of it.
And when she moves on me, teasing me, inviting me, conjuring the electricity I’d thought I’d lost, we begin to grow together.
First by inches, and then by miles.
The buildings become dollhouses, the city filling with tinker-toys. The trees begin to look like twigs. She looks so strong, watching her body swell, there is a new kind of beauty, something unstoppable in her. I feel it in myself, and I feel like myself, as much as I ever have. We’re ravenous for each other, kissing, teasing, touching one another, rising higher above the skyline, feeling the old world of little paper houses crumble beneath our feet. It doesn’t fit us anymore.
(I said fit, not hold.)
The pressure’s down. The boss is gone. The moon is bright. Her smile enslaves me. She just bought a hat, it looks good on her. Somewhere far away, a saxophone is playing. Arcade noises, clanging and clinking, fill the air.
Every movement is rotoscoped. A man passes by, talking about Kierkegaard’s last words. First an iguana bites as we walk across the bridge, and then we waltz.
I’m asking too much.
Tonight is perfect.
We’re in a little seaside bar and grill. Even inside, surrounded by air conditioning and the anchors and compasses and maps to buried treasure hanging on the wall, I smell salt. I’m drinking iced tea (it shouldn’t taste so special, there’s nothing I can describe that’s actually distinctive about it, but here, it always does). The food was to-die-for. She got up and she’s playing the Ms. Pac-Man machine and she got the high score and is going absolutely berserk because she’s never got to that high of a level before and there I sit, thoroughly in love with this mad woman and this small perfect, diamond of a moment.
“Perfect Day” by Lou Reed is playing, and it makes me remember that “Goodnight Ladies” is on the same album, and the album is titled “Transformer.”
Where has Ophelia gone, anyway?
The mountains shudder as our bodies move. She half-commands, half-begs for more. Everything loses definition but gains intensity. Her leg stretches out, and she kicks boulders into a valley, though she tells me they feel like pebbles. I moan when I hear it; she’s so big.
The world is so huge. I’m microscopic. I worry that I’ll never find her. The distances are unimaginable. Is she a mote, like me? Can we even begin to seek each other? Will we be carried without weight of our own, tossed by the wind, light as the breeze?
Is she so small that I can’t see her? Am I so small that she can’t see me? Is she even really there at all?
I’m driving down the highway to a little college town, barely on the map; “Blue Heaven” is playing.
And then “Blue Sunday.”
And “Sycamore Trees.”
And “Summer in the City.”
And “Whiskey on a Sunday.”
And then there’s a white tiger in a field, one of the mansions, a parade, a junkyard, a chemical spill, an atomic bomb, a dream, white light, the moon, water, a lake, an ocean, a white wave, a sweetheart, a shadow, rolling dice, a drink, and a ghost.
I’m terribly nervous. I’m going back to prison. I wish she was here.
The neon clock built into the wide, circular mall ceiling shows twelve, though looking at it, I couldn’t tell time; somehow, through clear plastic pillars, sparkles float ever up and on.
She and I are astronauts; we are blasting off into space.
(The mall is gone now.)
I’m back on the highway. He sang me there. It hasn’t happened (yet?). I’m heading for the Coast, for the Key.
The radio’s on, some pirate station, the same voice from an old CD player, down south where the air is thick and heavy. It’s playing her voice. I wish I knew (could remember?) what it sounded like. The sound of it, the thought of it, the memory makes me cry. We’re still friends.
Is there more?
Tensed hands claw at my back. I kiss her breasts, I start sucking. I want her, and I’m terrified. She’s sprawled on the forest (or was it the city?). It’s all too small to tell what’s below us. Reaching for her hand, there’s a cold splash; it feels like a puddle, but our hands have crashed down upon a river. She smiles at me when we realize it. I kiss her again. Our hands squeeze tighter.
There’s rapture. There’s a beautiful, exquisite pain. Our orgasms are explosions.
A hole is torn through the barrier.
Later we’ll walk towards walk towards the horizon.
It fades forever and ever as (we) move.