Riding the Bus

Riding the Bus

She was liquid rose lips and soft smooth poreless skin with amber hair that glinted yellow and brown under the bus lights. She might have had a halo, but when she began talking the dissipated under the carnality of her tone. She was one of those girls who had been aware of her unnamed sensuality before it was age appropriate to recognize her sensuality. Adults had looked at her and looked away, embarassed at seeing such things in a child.
She delighted in making strangers uncomfortable. She was sitting next to me on the hard plastic bus seat, lips gliding under a tongue that was wet and shining. I was not uncomfortable or put off. Maybe it was the alcohol…or maybe it was just my diseased wit. I stared at her like masochistic rodent stares at its viper predator, waiting with delicious anticipation for her poisonous bite.
I was a stranger on the verge of familiarization. We were on a bus gliding down some nameless rode…I had missed my stop in the midst of drunken concentration on her moving mouth. The sounds made no sense, but sounds had never made sense when they had come from the opposite sex. My ears could hear, but my brain was never particularly good at decoding what they said. I found that I had far more success by focusing on the eyes and movement of females.
Women can disguise words. They can say one thing and mean an entirely different thing, but their bodies never lie. The distance between us and them, the way their eyes widen or narrow, and the way they cast a look back when they walk away…these are things that let you know whether to pursue or to stay put. I was an exhausted predator, seeking to conserve my energy rather than expend it on a fruitless hunt.
Earlier that night I had been drinking tremendous amounts of beer and I had compounded that by consuming six whiskeys straight up with the final beer. I was on the savanna of rubber and plastic and yellow overhead lights, resting and sunning myself in darkly lit bus seat. She had come to sit next me, and I could not figure out who was hunting whom at that moment.
I had lit a cigarette and the smoke had curled upward between us, weaving a sinewy pattern between us that curled and bent. She had told me that I couldn't smoke on a public bus and I had remained silent, eyes hooded by half-lids as I tried to gauge how serious she was in saying such a thing. I kept my neck straight, my head focused towards her. When you watch a lion stalk its prey, its head never moves. The rest of its body ripples with movement and the suggestion of what is to come, but the head is low and stationary, focused on the animal across the field that is its object.
She had begun to move closer after getting no audible response. She had shifted ever so slightly in her seat, and the bus had begun moving. I recognized my wind chimes out of the corner of my eye through the tinted windows, and my porch had faded. She was stretching one finger out of a clenched fist over her cheek and letting her mouth fall ever so slightly open as I watched and drank her in.
She was every bit as intoxicating as any spirit, but she didn't burn going down my eyes. The burn with women is always delayed. Whiskey is honest and open, and the burn is immediate. Women aren't dishonest; they're just subtle. Subtle is honesty without a high quantity of candor. It's a weaker spirit, easier to consume by virtue of its lack of blunt truth.
She was speaking, and I was thinking to myself of that refrain from Eliot. "In the rooms the women come and go, talking of Michelangelo." Whatever she was saying was purely stock with no real significance whatsoever. The game was going on right here in a bus seat. I could see in the dim light that her pupils were widening whenever my hands would roll the fingers across my knee. I was playing four notes on a piano back and forth with each roll, drilling those four notes through my kneecap and letting her know that I was physically alive and significant. What else might I do with those fingers?
The lips were gliding under the tongue, wet and smooth and glistening under the yellow dim light of the bus. Her hair was glowing with the backdrop of the light, and her face was darker…a nimbus of sorts. I was straining to see what lay in the darker areas. I wanted to know what those areas contained, to train a light on her face so that none of it was private and hidden and all was known and illuminated.
It's never that straightforward, of course. You have to strain to see those dark hidden areas, and guess as to what might be in the areas that you cannot see from the areas that you can see. It's a jigsaw puzzle with missing pieces. You have to imagine what might be in the unfilled area from the pieces around it. I was doing just this when the bus stopped and exhaled with the air brakes.
She got up, and her face was completely black while her hair caught fire with light. I heard her voice say that this was her stop. In the moment that she began to turn, I caught those eyes narrow with wide pupils and I knew. Still I waited as she turned to walk, and as she was halfway to the door, she turned to cast one final look at what might turn her to a pillar. I rose to depart.

Love and Other Unspeakable Things

I had followed her for half a block, my legs heavy with the burden of supporting me. My muscles were tensed, waiting for that moment when they would have to explode with effort and catapult me towards her in a burst of speed. I had ascertained that she was blond with brown eyes. Her shoulder blades were delicate and pronounced in her back, and her shoulders rippled with every sway of those hips that made her buttocks pulse with intent. She was looking back every few strides with that smug satisfied smirk, knowing that she had her prey on the stalk.
There are no angels who sit on your shoulders in such moments; no voices that cry out against your body and its intentions. There is only that driving focus that rests behind your eyes and keeps your head still and steady, focused on what is in front of you. It is paired with that growing feeling right beneath your navel. You can feel these two sensations linked by that hard-elongated column of a spine in your back.
The distance between us closed when she came to a door. I was no more than three inches behind her, my breath catching her hair every time I inhaled and drawing it up in to my face. She smelled of perfume and some kind of coconut shampoo. She opened the door and stepped into the room before she turned back and looked at me with invitation in her eyes.
The eyes tell you all that you will ever need to know. You might listen to a woman's mouth for an eternity and never glean some much as an ounce of wisdom, but you can listen to a woman's eyes and in one moment achieve enlightenment. I stepped inside. The door closed behind me.
She poured us both some clear liquid into teacups and brought it to me as I stood next to her coffee table. I took a sip of the liquid, and when I had brought my lips away from the edge of the teacup, she reached up with her hand to the back of my head and brought my mouth down to hers. "You are a tall tree…are your roots deep?" Indeed.
I could feel my roots, deep and fixed in the floor, my body stiff with expectation. She was all little girl grown up, every movement a dance that she had rehearsed a million times in her maturation until she had mastered it enough to find someone to reciprocate. I was the reciprocal. She was sinewy and wavy in her movements, and I was strong and immovable in mine. She needed a contrast, and her body brushed mine as she moved to some silent song that pulsed within her.
She turned to face me, her palms flat against my cheeks, my eyes boring down into hers with my head up. She looked over at the open doorway that held the promise of love and other unspeakable things beneath recently washed sheets. This is what our bodies do. Her eyes spoke as she moved up against me, lips barely parted, teeth glinting white beyond their now dark pink appearance. How strange it is that we should show affection and intent by pressing lips together. My body finally moved as I made the final burst of six inches to overtake my prey, kissing her mouth hard as my hands seized her forearms and we moved forward and backwards together, me pushing and her pulling into the bedroom entrance.
Darkness closed over us like a sheet. All was touch and sensation for a moment, much like life with God. You cannot see Him, but you now he is there…you can sense it. Sensory evidence was all I had until my eyes adjusted to the darkness and then I had only her silhouette as she stripped of her shirt, long lean sinewy arms struggling for a brief second until the shirt popped loose of her arms and fell to the floor. Her breasts fell free and pushed forwards into the silver light from the window. My shoes came off, and then my pants fell free, and we were naked before each other. The most honest part of the night was here.
We each had a moment of brief doubt, knowing that at this moment the truth could prove undesirable and ruin the effect that we had been aiming for. The truth set in and confirmed our feelings. Bodies began the tangle of unspeakable things, arms and tongues intertwining taut and tightening, then slack and relaxing, only to tighten over each other again until they had reached the place where they could only unwind and no longer tighten. I could feel the halo of her hair on my chest as the mattress found my back. What was love but a few seconds of something unspeakable?

Finger Tracings

The time immediately after such an act is the only time a woman can expect to interrogate a man and get an honest answer. If we were oracles of ancient times, you'd have brought us incense or offerings…but we aren't oracles of ancient times. The price is higher or lesser depending on how you view it, and the transaction runs both ways.
When you beat someone, really beat them, they might be laying on the ground bleeding and crying, but you have that image and those sensations bruised into your memory from that time forward. In a way, the injury is two-sided. Sex runs both ways like that. We like to think that we aren't being exploited, that if anyone is being used, it's the other person and that makes us the user. The smart one. It isn't so, but we tell ourselves that because it's better in some ways to believe. If you had to choose between beating and being beaten, what would you choose?
It was in the midst of these thoughts that I felt fingers tracing over the skin of my chest. We were smoking hashish. It was certainly a much heavier after sex experience than a cigarette. I had had my fill after only a few hits, but she was insistent that I indulge just a little more. She was like a mother trying to convince her infant to take just a few more bites off of a plate.
I obliged, and the fingers marched over my chest as her nose met my neck. Her troops marched over the field under which my beating heart throbbed, oblivious to the consequence of going into such territory. She wanted more of me, and it was nice to be wanted in such copious quantities. The fingers continued tiptoeing back and forth as her body shifted next to mine. Fingers on my chest, marching, marching…up to the collarbone, then up the neck and under the chin until they met my lips as her lips met me.
That part of our bodies in which our identities are most bound up comes alive in those moments. For women, their femininity is bound up not just there but in their breasts and their overall shape. Our masculinity is in one place. I could feel the soft warm wetness of her mouth over me, and the hash was taking its affect. Up and down, shifting her head from side to side as she brought me up.
I was growing…growing and all my life was going to that one place. Everything was centered just below the navel in one hot center, and all my limbs no longer mattered. The heaviness that is present just behind your eyes and face disappears as conscious dissipates from your brain only to reappear below your waist. You are aware of sound because you feel it. You are aware of sight because it confirms what you are feeling in those moments.
There is no morality below a certain point of the body. Good and evil cease to be separate in the union of man and woman. The fingers traced back over the skin of the neck and down to the chest, awakening the dead skin and bringing life back up from the waist to wherever they touched. She was transmitting energy as she consumed it with her mouth voraciously…from her mouth through her fingertips; the transfer was taking place.
You can have conversations in those moments, conversations that span the entire spectrum of what you are feeling and do not require a single word. The language of bodies in action speaks more potently than the most eloquent lecturer. Words can incite action or cause it to cease, but they can never have the same force as action.
She felt for me, and her actions showed it. There was a desire in her to do things to me that would feel good. "How quickly that can change between us", I thought to myself and then the thought burst into a shower of sparks and light like a firecracker against the dark backdrop of my mind. Those sparks came down on my skin, making it tingle along with the tracing fingers. One hand was tight around me, and the other was lightly grazing over the skin of my torso.
I was being wound tighter and tighter until I would either snap or come loose in a rapid unwinding. I could feel the tense tautness as that area beneath my navel and just above my masculinity filled while I sucked in one last lungful of air and gasped. The spiraling unwind came and I was spinning around and around inside of her mouth, the sensations of pleasure becoming so intense as to be almost painful. I tried to jerk back from her, but the mattress would not let me go any further back. My body suddenly went slack and loose underneath her. I looked down through dazed eyes and saw her dark sparkling face. The energy that I had just expended was present within her.
I was shiny and glistening in her hand, still hard and visibly throbbing. She was smiling and her teeth were white. Those fingers skipped over my stomach and then walked across a chest as my consciousness was returning back up through my spine and into that area just behind the eyes and face. She was moving forward and over me, aligning herself with that part of me that had just exploded.
She plunged down in a diving motion, her hips hitting mine with barely a sound and I was inside of her while she was encircling me with warmth and hot moisture. She rocked back and forth, eyes closed and then her face went up toward the ceiling and all I see was her creamy neck and the underside of her chin pointed and perfect. My fingers traced over her sides as my hands had moved to her hips to stabilize her body over mine. She would not have realized that I was even there if not for the sensation of those hands.
She was rocking back and forth rather than up and down, moving her hips towards my face and back towards my feet. I was being ground to dust inside of her. My fingers grazed over her sides and then around to her back just above and over the hips. Her head jerked forward and the eyes opened for just a moment as she grimaced. The lips were tight and thin, pressed hard together, and her nostrils were flaring as she wound tight.
I was only the stiffness inside of her and the parts that occupied the space underneath her thighs. Where our bodies touched she was aware of me, but she was far more aware of what was building inside of her. The breasts came centimeters from my face as she leaned over me and placed her palms flat against the headboard of the bed to stabilize herself. The teeth were visible now, and my mouth opened to catch her breast as it moved above me.
She was feeling what I just felt, that area beneath her stomach growing in heat and intensity. I could feel that part of her that protruded angled against me, scraping the length of me as she began moving up and down on me. The aggression of her movements continued to escalate as she quickened the pace of her thrusts. Suddenly she began to shake, and her neck stretched; the tendons and veins becoming visible as she stopped in mid-thrust on me. She was shaking and trembling over me, and I pushed upwards with what was left of my strength…pushed up because she could not longer push down as her body was convulsing.
I was now fully inside of her and with my hands I moved her hips towards my face and back towards my feet. My body began to fill again, in that area where love and other unspeakable things occur. I felt the seizure begin just underneath the soft skin of testicles, in that place between extremes. Upward it traveled into the length of my manhood until it burst into her.
She was gasping and grinding against me as I went limp against the mattress with only one part of me still taut. Her hips still pumped up and down on me and she exploded in a shower of sparks that enveloped me…those sparks showering down onto my skin as her hands were now flat on my chest and the electricity from her was going straight through me. I could not breathe for a few seconds as the room was bright and her hands threatened to push through my body and out of my back.
It was over and she was on top of me, breasts soft and warm against my stomach and head resting underneath my chin. I was soft inside of her and she was soft around me. The fingers traced and glided and grazed over what was left of me as I ran my fingers tip over her spine, feeling the vertebrae as they threatened to snap through her skin with each heavy breath, only to recede as she exhaled.
I looked down and she looked up, and her face was shiny and glistening with sweat from her exertions…lightly coated skin wet from perspiration. She was smiling as I was dying underneath of her. My eyes were heavy as she began to melt into me, and the weighted eyelids slowly closed the sight of her out. I felt her fingers trace over the sides of my hips, up the sensitive skin between the hips and the ribs…and then up to the ribs and over the nipples. Everything was black and blind, and only feeling was left.
The feeling faded as we both surrendered to Hypnus, and fell into the waters to drown.

The Tears of Eos

I awoke out in the wet grass, my clothes sticking to my skin in cold clamminess. I looked and there was green grass and dusky dawn everywhere, but nothing else. No buildings, no bed, no girl next to me. There were no trees, just flat ground and grass in all directions. Dew covered the grass and made it lie flat against the earth, but the ground was hard…and as my hand reached to push my body up from the ground, I could feel that the soil underneath the grass was hard and dry. It was not penetrated by the moisture of the dew in the slightest way.
I looked out over the field of grass that stretched to the limits of my eyes. There was no one here with me. "Are you affected by tears?" I looked around to find the source of this voice. The sun was growing. "My tears are many…mothers cry for their children, and women cry for their lovers…whatever we gain in this life is always lost." I could not see anyone.
"There are those who can look at the tears and be as hard and dry as the soil underneath of this grass." I looked over the field, and the grass was withering…the green coloration replaced by a grayer shade that continued to go closer to white as the grass shrank. There was hard soil around me and underneath my body. The dew was beading up on the dry surface of the soil.
"What will you be, when the tears come?" I felt the panic welling up inside of me, as I turned my head to see the grass disappearing with my scan. There was hard, dry, cracked earth everywhere now…the green was gone. The dewdrops were now beads of moisture on the earth. I was confused.
"What will you be, when the tears come?" "I don't know what is going on, but I want…" My voice disappeared inside of chest as my mouth continued to move. I turned to my right and saw a lady, dressed in white, holding a man like a mother would hold a baby. She was cradling him in her arms, and he was broken and dead. The tears fell from her eyes to the earth, only to form small beads on the dry earth.
As the sun rose over us, its light showering our bodies, her face grew dark, for she was in front of the sun. I could see the man's body, broken and bent in her arms, and for a moment his mouth fell open…and music came out.
"What will you be, when the tears come?"
Awaken to Dawn/Being Fed

I awoke with eyes already adjusted for light. The alarm clock next to the bed was playing its music, slow sinuous hypnotic music, and I bent upwards to get a better view. She was no longer next to me, but I could hear her in that space beyond the door. She came in with a plate of food.
"I made you something to eat…a girl should feed a man after making him work thus." I smiled at her. She came to the foot of the bed, as I was propped up on my elbows looking at her, and then she stepped straight up onto the bed with the plate in her hand. She walked over my body, looking down at me with a satisfied smile as I stared in bewilderment.
She then bent her knees and sat down on my body, took her fingers and began pinching the scrambled eggs and hashbrowns from the plate. She then moved the food to my mouth, and my lips opened reflexively. "Why do you not use a fork?" "I hate the way it sounds on teeth, and fingers are more intimate…you're being fed from my hand. More of a connection, I suppose." Her eyes looked at the plate as her fingers gathered another pinch of food. I could feel her fingers lingering on my lips after she released the food into my mouth, grazing and gliding over the contours.
When I swallowed, she would repeat the whole wonderful process. The plate was finally clear, and I was thirsty. She disappeared beyond the doorway and came back with a red drink in a glass. I tasted strawberries when I sipped it. She was straddling my body, holding the glass as I drank, eyes deep into mine…gauging what lay behind my eyes. When I looked into her eyes, I saw only my own face.
She placed the empty glass on the nightstand next to the alarm clock, and began moving the sheets down my legs until I was revealed to her. We rocked slow and steady, and she wrapped her hand around the back of my head, turning my face sideways and pulling me to her chest as I was inside of her. The heat of her was all around me, through the gauzy nightgown that she was wearing rustled against my skin, and she was rocking back and forth with my face against her chest, her fingers taut in my hair.
I could hear beating against my face, and I knew that she was close. Her heart seemed like it would burst inside of her, and she cried out and I heard the sound as it began deep inside of her…and then a second time as it exploded from her throat and filled the room. I was becoming full, and the part of me that was white-hot throbbing hard shook several times as I burst inside of her.
I could not speak in the moment after. My face was pressed into her body, and her hands stroked the back of my head. Gradually she let me down into the pillows and my back reached the mattress. "It is good to have someone." I could only nod in agreement.
After just a moment, I went into the bathroom and began to urinate. I did not feel like standing. My whole body was tired and my legs were protesting at the chore. My neck would not hold my head up, and it lay to the side against my shoulder, threatening to fall backwards completely. I had not realized that she was behind me until I turned. "You want to take a shower?"
My legs suddenly became steady again. She picked my arm up from my side by the wrist, turning to lead me to the shower…she turned the water on, testing it with her free hand, and then clicked the lever and the shower head burst with spray. She stepped inside and pulled me with her, closing the curtain behind us. I was standing in front of her underneath warm waterfalls, and she had soapy hands that were scrubbing me. She pushed me on my left side and I turned until my back was facing her. She began to scrub my body, starting at the neck and working down the shoulders, until she reached the lower back. She then went over my buttocks, down the backs of legs, and pulled my feet up back the ankles one by one until she had scrubbed the bottoms of my feet. She came back up and pressed her lips into my spine, slowly mashing her mouth against my back.
"Now it's your turn…" I turned and she was standing there, naked and beautiful in front of me. The water traced lines all over her body and her nipples were pointing at me, beckoning me to begin. I took the soap in my hands and worked up the lather. I went over every part of her body slowly, savoring the opportunity to touch her in that way.
I did not turn her around, but pulled her into me until her head was resting on my chest, and then I worked my hands over her hair, pulling it to one side to expose the back of her neck. I began soaping the neck as she pressed against me, feeling my body push into hers in that inevitable way. My body was hard against her stomach, and she was moving against me ever so slightly to keep me growing harder and harder.
My hands worked down to those soft buttocks, the soap slippery hands kneading and massaging the pliant flesh as the water ran over us. I could feel her breathing against me, the hot breath going against my chest as the rivulets of water ran over us and between us. Down I went before her, kneeling so that I could continue on her legs, face to face with that part of her that was driving me mad inside.
Her lips were parted just barely, the teeth dim and gleaming as her nostrils expanded and contracted while the water came off of her in drop streams and hit my face, threatening to blind my eyes. My hands worked her thighs around, and down to her calves and ankles, as I looked up at her. Her feet lifted one by one for my hands in a ballet of coordination.
It was then that I reached down to the pool underneath me and rinsed my hands…her hands were now flat against my ears and hair, fingers running through my hair. I lifted my hands from the water and reached around her to cup her in my hands, pulling her to my face and plunging my mouth against her. The shock of her taste made me draw back for a moment, but I continued with lips and tongue covered with her. She grew in my mouth, that part of her that was hidden in the folds of flesh coming out with each lash of my tongue.
Her thighs clapped together and shook as her hands gripped my hair and pulled me closer into her. My nose was mashed flat against her, and it was hard to breath in the water that was growing lukewarm over us, but still I continued to lash her, the breaths coming hot against her stomach. She was writhing against me, groaning and gripping my hair, pulling it until it was stretched tight and painful. The pain did not matter, only the sound of her moans and the taste of her heat.
She thrust herself against me driving me backwards and almost knocking me off of my feet, but I steadied myself and continued to work my tongue and lips, holding her protruding body between my lips as my tongue worked over it. I could barely breathe, and my head was turning over inside of itself. She was pressed so hard against me that it was hard to tell where she ended and I began. She screamed higher than before, hips jerking as her hands held me into her, slapping against me as she pulled back and pushed forward.
She was trembling as she pulled me away from her and turned my face upward to meet her eyes. There were no words to be said in a gaze like that. All was communicated through the eyes. I was panting and exhausted, the air rushing into my lungs and filling them completely. She was looking down, water droplets cascading from her hair and body down towards me as I kneeled before her.
She pulled my head up, and I rose just high enough to meet her mouth. She swallowed me in that moment, devouring my face with kisses. She pulled my head over her shoulder and I rose the rest of the way with her arms folded over my shoulders as the hands held the back of my head. I lifted her off the ground and her legs encircled my waist as we stepped out of the shower onto the cold bathroom floor. She was cool and wet against me, and I could hear her whisper that we should go to the bed and lay down, and so we went, soaked and wet to the sheets.
The rays of the sun were sneaking through the blinds and casting shadows over flesh as we lay pressed together and wet on the bed. She was kissing me on my mouth, slow soft kisses with a tongue that barely went past my lips and fingers that glided over my cheeks. We were not moving when our bodies found each other and united.
It took mere seconds for the tension that had built in the lips to explode in our waists, and all was over and silent. She was laying on top of me, her head on its side on my chest. I was awake on wet sheets that clung to my skin. My eyes scanned the bedroom and there was a lovely creature laying with me, laying on me, and I was not alone. In the corner there was a black and white photograph of a bridge, steel and black against the backdrop of a gray sky and a white-hot sun that threatened to burn through the paper and glass.
As sleep came to us, I heard the voice from the grass field echoing in the room. "What will you be, when the tears come?" I could not imagine tears after such a morning, and I dismissed the voice and fell asleep.

Gain and Loss

We awoke in the dampness of the afternoon. She was smiling and happy, and I was in concord with her mood. I had gained something in the span of a day and a night that had not previously been mine. Whatever might arrive could not shatter the perfection of what was now. We tell ourselves such things in certain moments.
We cling to gains for fear of losses, and we deny loss altogether until it refuses our denial with its taking. After a little discussion, we were both hungry…she knew of a place down the street, and we could take her car. I paused and asked why she had been on the bus if she had a car? "Don't you know?" she had said. "I ride the bus to pick up strange men…" With a sly look and a smile, she turned and walked to the closet to put on a blouse and some pants. She was pleasant to watch as she dressed.
Her arms would ripple with movement as she pushed them through sleeves, and whenever her fingers would move to grasp some garment, her forearms would tell of her fingers in their flexing. She was taut and small, every feature delicate but strong edged. She turned with a smile to me as I watched her dress and said "I don't pick up strange men, you know…I was out on a date last night, and he was a real proper beast, so I took the bus to avoid being in the car with him. Didn't have enough money to fetch a taxi."
"So I'm not a proper beast, then?" "I don't think anyone would call the events of the past day proper…but you'll do." She smiled, sitting on the edge of the bed across from me. Her hand reached out and slapped my leg. "Well come on, now…you can go with me with no clothes, but I wouldn't advise it. It's a bit cold at night, and that would put you at the risk of making of bad impression, now wouldn't it?"
I rose and got dressed. She looked me over approvingly, and smiled. Her hand linked up with mine and she led us out of her place. She turned to look door behind us, and then lead me to her car. She unlocked it, and I opened the passenger side door and got in as she went around to the driver's side.
We drove for all of a minute to the diner down the street. I was teasing her about how we could have walked while she parked, and she was laughing. We got out of the car, and linked hands again. I was in the lead, ready to open the door for her to walk through. I heard her scream before I realized anything.
The warm wetness running down my neck and shoulders was next, followed by a loud firecracker sound reverberating. I felt the hottest heat I had ever felt burning just below my jaw and ear. I turned and saw her, both hands over her mouth but unable to stop the sound. Everyone cries out to God in those moments, and she was no different. She was screaming to him over and over again.
I tried to lean against the windowpane of the diner, but my hand was slippery with my own blood. I knew that it was awful at the moment that my hand slid off the glass in a red trail. My legs lost all rigidity. I collapsed forward and she caught me and lowered me to the ground. She kept saying "No" as if saying it over and over enough would erase or reverse the events of the previous few seconds of time.
Time seems so long and slow in those moments. You are aware that it isn't nearly as long as it seems, that in mere seconds that seem like hours, you are losing yourself. I tried to speak but only blood would come out of my mouth. I looked up at her, and felt the warmth of her hands holding my arm and neck as I was cradled on the hard sidewalk. The blood was puddled up, beading on the sidewalk and the hot asphalt. It was congealing on the asphalt.
I looked back up at her because I did not want to remember the sidewalk with my blood as the last thing I ever saw. I was trying desperately to breathe, to know what to do in those moments. I thought of God, and wondered if there was anything to apologize for or consider in the moment that I occupied. I could not think of anything, but I knew that it was there.
I had her in front of me to prove God. She was beautiful and tear-streaked glory, face contorted in pain and anguish but still gorgeous. I did all that I could do in that final moment…I reached up with my clean hand, the one that did not have blood on it, and placed it on her cheek as she tried to lift my heavy limp body to her, cradling me in her arms as she sobbed. My flat palm found her cheek and felt the warmth that I was so quickly losing, and I heard the music of that dawn from my dream.
I ached for her tears. I could not be hard against such pain. Each tear seared my skin, wore through my clothes as it dropped from her to me, and evaporated in steam on the skin underneath the fabric. My hand would no longer stay against her cheek, but she grabbed the wrist as it began to fall away and held it to her face. My eyes lost their focus until she was blurry and indistinct. I wanted so badly to hear her voice, to be able to say something for her to hear.
I was not hard when the tears came, and my loss was evidence of the greatness of what I had gained. When the dawn comes, the voice that could not speak in those moments of loss will sing, and she will remember. I was not impermeable to her tears, but I absorbed them in my body and took them with me.

Copyright 2006 Jay Bates