by Willow Regnery
(09/21/05)
It was 5:34 pm on a graying October day, and I found myself returning to my apartment of ferns and zydeco. My shirtsleeves were rolled up, and my jacket was threaded through the strap of my messenger bag. I was squished. Packed in with just enough room to breathe, but just barely. Do not take the N Judah if you don't have to. Or do, if you like that kind of thing, or if you want to pay homage to the Happy Doughnut at 14th where late-night fucking went on in the form of bad coffee, donuts, and inked words on 6 wrists that signaled where else they should have been.
beauty / woman / taste / desire / smooth / fast
Nothing happened. The words disappeared in the mornings shower.
Not from a night of sweat.
Caress of a calf on my shin; a bump in the track, or a shift? As we passed 14th, my eyes closed themselves for a moment, not a minute, but a smaller increment of time, to record the ache of that night, the unfilled cup, the mouth stuck with greasy doughnuts.
Love is a great storm, and it breaks when we don't have a raincoat or an umbrella and we are forced to take shelter somewhere, somehow. To ask for a lift. To go into a shop never before entered. To accept the offer of a magazine or a newspaper. To go outside of our usual path. To notice the not before noticed.
A finger tucking a thread of hair behind an ear and lingering, on the ridge of the trapezius, pointing at you.
What are you thinking? Want me to tell you?
We cross 19th and head to the ocean. On either side, restaurants signal food, shops take in the last rush of customers for the day, and people talk more slowly, hair down, pumps or loafers replaced by sneakers.
The doors open and I descend. The chill of the fog rolling in touches me and I put my jacket on. In that pause I feel the resonance of your voice.
The breath on my neck.
The calf on my shin.
The finger pointing.
And those words. Those longed for words.
Impossible. I moved here to escape them, to erase the memory in the sensors that picked up those words, to evict the slip of 26 letters from the space across my inner ear, to edit those unnecessary syllables from my page.
The street beckons and I walk along it, looking at menus posted to distract me. Nothing. My stomach has no name to be called and it wants bread & cheese & apples waiting at home.
A smell wafts by and I stop breathing for a breath.
Cloves and sweet, sweet sweat, the very taste of which could send me into spirals of ripples. There is nothing like standing in the elevator the next day and smelling the scent of the night before in the fold of my elbow where you lay your head facing me all night.
A wrist with ink written on it.
I place my hands to my temples to squeeze these thoughts from my head. This surprisingly works, and I manage to notice the headlines of the papers long enough to mentally chastise the politicians for one more act of power that should never have been theirs. My street comes and I turn onto it. I wave to the lady across the street with her dog, and say hello to my neighbor walking with his kids to the corner store. My feet are suddenly tired and tell me this as I ascend the stairs.
let me in let me in let me in
I turn, and she stands at the base of the stairs. It starts to rain. I open the door without a word and wait until she bounds up the steps. While I check my mail her breath heaves. We go upstairs and I put my bag down on the counter, my shoes by the door. The ferns perk up and I turn the stereo to familiar rhythms.
Move this way. Now this. Try this, yes that's it.
She sits in the chair by the window. Walking toward her, time and place shift, and I do not remember if it was her or me that last asked, and where, and how desperately.
This is as far as it goes. We'll sit here and talk about the words until the radio goes off and then the door will close and she will be gone. That's what she seems to want.
The sound of a door shutting.
Not the sound of a sigh.
Not the sound of my hips or lips on hers.
Twenty-nine lovers, and every one leaves a mark in invisible ink somewhere on the map of my body, so that now the pass of a hand over my skin reflects a mysterious language in the luminous heat of another's flesh. Sometimes they notice, sometimes they ask questions, usually they just sit back and look, trying to decipher what is there and why it is that they can't speak.
We compare notes on a recent novel. The poetry was well-balanced within the prose. She thinks that the ideas were over her head. I say that perhaps she is trying too hard. Somewhere she gets up and makes dinner, and I watch her face in the steam of the stove. Teeth snipping a strand of pasta. Feet sliding across the tile floor in different colored socks.
I stopped asking because it was too hard for me to see her with these words constantly pushing their way through the ferns and my clenched teeth.
The past whirls around me when I would most like it to stand still and stay where it should. Time doesn't listen to me.
She is none of the past and all of it, or what it has all been leading to.
She is the hand of cards I am now dealt that the mischievous jester loves to shuffle, and snickers at me as I throw my fists in the air and stomp my feet on the floor where those cards fell.
We sit down to eat. She eats with chopsticks.
Look, I'm flying! Words are clouds and your mouth is building ladders.
After dinner I do the dishes, which means that she is about to leave. I plunge my hands into the sink filled with soapy water and wait for the inevitable closing words as we talk about her day at work.
But.
Her hand reaches for a plate, and her sleeve is pulled up, and her wrist is written on in ink.
beauty
I say nothing still.
She moves closer to me, and then behind me. Her breath on my trapezius. My calf feels her shin. Her fingers point at where they want to touch without touching.
Breath pauses. The second-hand muffles itself. The conductor holds up his hands while the whole orchestra hangs on his movements, their bows and fingers poised and waiting.
This isn't how I expected it. I am just a mirror, a sounding board.
I want you to see me, to tell me the words you have for me. I want you to say me, to name me with sounds from behind your tongue.
She says this in the space by my ear --
I heard about the night at 14th and Judah. I've been writing beauty on my wrist since then.
Rain patters on the window and I open it for the ferns. In the kitchen she lifts my shirt and kisses my vertebrae and I sigh. This is how it has all stacked up to be, and this is the place that I want to be on an autumn night.
The jester was right.
Her breath is a sudden blow on my neck, and I turn.
