vast

they rocked, and the bay's breeze blew in, and into that wind, he asked her though he knew how she would answer, as she always answered. she had been quiet almost all the day, and without intent of continuing that theme, of that he was sure, she pointed to the descending sun. the boat wasnt perfect for the open waters, he preferred the bays and intercoastals, but he spun the nose towards the bridge that arched the bay and pushed forward the throttle. it lunged forward as only smaller boats seemed to do. she swung her head to face him, and there he saw her first real smile of the day- that that he was sure was specifically hers- intimate and fragile, young and wonderful. she scooted up the seat towards the foremost part of the bow- her hair screamed out behind her, a long wail of brown.
he had told her more times than he could count that she was beautiful- but no matter how he assailed her- in earnest or in sincerity- those words never made it inside. he picked a line to follow, there were never any boats heading out this time of day, and in that easy path he swallowed all the things the wind would have kept him from saying anyway. that he thought her chin and neckline were perfect, and that the slim nature of her shoulders elegant even in that peruvian print bikini top. and while he assumed as all thinner girls tended to do, that she found herself lacking in so many ways- there was a long slim balance to her that he had always found so appealing. he considered resolving to try and tell her later but let those words slip from his memory, she had made her point in the score of days with her long silences.
he redirected the craft for a moment, to bounce over the diminishing wake of a retreating boat and threw out a casual wave as nautical courtesy, and then was off and under the bridge. bridges were strange things, at a distance so self evident that they hardly required much consideration. but passing underneath one the size of the sunshine skyway demanded one to wonder at how such things were made, and to marvel at the uncontainable will of men.
the churn of the engine became an endless refrain as they headed west, the individuality of every wave lost beneath the haste of their transit, the only sign of any passing time was the crawling of the sun to the horizon.
this is where he belonged, and he thought her too, chasing the sun in a voiceless joyful howl of wind, the long sunned brown of her limbs stretched out and his hands holding him upright at the center console, forever.
and then they were there, that place she always requested, and he pulled back the throttle, and watched the numbers on the depth finder shrink. he wasnt sure, though time would tell, if it was becoming or ceasing to be a key- and in a sad sudden realization he realized it didnt really matter, either way it would one day not be what it was now.
her feet hit the water, and where he would have trudged she seemed to skim out and away from the boat. a few yards away, where the depth came to the middle of her thighs, she stopped and stood. the water surrounded on all sides by transitioning sands almost ceased to move, laying flat and still like a mirror. almost exactly when she put her hands palms down onto the face of the waters the sun had reached that point where it cast its light over the sea, and the water ignited in oranges and pinks. she stood there as she preferred, silent and lovely, inflamed with the water.
it was quiet enough, that after some time he asked without having to raise his voice.
'why do you love this so much?' he knew already all the reasons he did.
she turned back to him, pushed a few uncooperative strands of hair back behind her ears. then she returned her hands to their resting place upon the sea.
with closed eyes she said, 'you know at night, when youre in a dark place, and you can really see the night sky, when you can see thousands and thousands of stars?'
'yeah'
'you know how small you feel? and maybe its scares you or saddens you or confuses you- or whatever, it just makes you feel really small?'
'yeah of course'
'here' she said, turning back to the sun, 'i feel endless, i feel vast.'

Creatures of the wind

she awoke before he did, stretched her best feline impression and eyed him over. she always was a bit envious of how men seemed to sleep so well in beds that weren't their own. his face was half buried into the crisp white pillow he had claimed, the rest of him lay about uncovered.
she hadn't meant to wake him, with the tracing finger she had run across his shoulders, but she saw him come to life, shudder slightly like the rumble of an old engine. he clawed a hand through his hair and through the hazy morning light of her bedroom she saw him look her over, and greet her good morning. god what must my hair look like, i haven't thought of it at all she thought but she smiled back at him, almost instinctively, there was just something about the rusty voice of a man in the morning she loved.
he rolled back on to his spine, stretched his toes, and didn't think to cover himself until she popped from bed and reached for an explosively colourful silk robe.  she sorted her hair, as only women seem to know how to do, without looking at it and a few brisk movements of her hands. the blonde in it was starting to go, and he thought she looked quite a picture of contrast- a hair coloured as a feign and those eyes so intense authentic and dark.
she fixed her hair and intentionally left her robe open, she fought back a smirk at his gaze and turned to walk to a nearby mirror. god i am sore but that smirk broadened to a full smile, she was sore in all of her favourite places. facing the mirror she made a show of looking  at her face but she was really evaluating her body. does no harm to make sure everything is looking good if you're going to prance around half naked she thought. breasts and stomach looked good, and so did her hips, ive always had nice hips, but she frowned at her thighs. she had always found them too large, but strangely enough boys seemed to always be so fond of them. she would always probably find them too large.
'certainly, not baroque though.' she said out loud without thinking.
in the mirrors reflection she saw a single eye creek open and look at her. she felt in that moment very exposed, with her hands at her face her  thighs and bottom were completely visible. his eye closed. 'no, not baroque. more  an impressionist era. degas perhaps'
he could not see her beam. she turned and looked him over, now covering the important areas.
'mantegna for you i think'. she decided. his eye brows raised though his eyes remained shut.
'without the holes i hope' he answered.
'of course' she responded silly boy.
'well i've better looking company that's for sure'. he finished.
god i should hope so. that didn't say much, the two ladies in that painting were ugly enough to almost ruin it. but it had been meant as a compliment and while there would have been plenty of days when she wouldn't have been able to take it as such, today she did.
it had been an off the cuff remark, not nearly as sweet as it should have been he thought. he propped himself up on his elbows and prepared himself to follow it, if necessary. mornings were delicate periods with women, too much light, too much reality floating around like the dusty particles that are exposed in the intruding morning rays of light. but she walked, danced, skipped in her own particularly joyous way to the kitchen and he concluded that it had been well enough received.
'breakfast?' she asked. with her back to him in the kitchen area- it was a large but single roomed studio flat.
'maybe, what are you in the mood for?'
she turned to him and flashed her most devilish smile 'momo's'
he chuckled and shook his head. he was too worn out from the night before to start again. in sheer volume he was her better but in tenacity she knew few equals.
he thought that she was probably often misunderstood. at first glance she did seem to be completely erratic and random in her movements and in her nature. she pulled out two champagne flutes, then walked to her collection of vinyls, thumbed through about ten and then picked one out but didn't place on the record player,  she crossed the room and across the extravagant thick persain rug of her floor to open the curtains, too wide at first, readjusted them, collected a book off the small chair side table, deposited it on the kitchen counter, paused for a moment to consider herself, and then returned to the glasses. she was a leaf on the breeze, not as some frantic victim of propulsion but as some part of the divine synchronicity of the universe. it was all as rhythmic in its own way as all the heavenly movements just not as easy to discern.
she saw him pull on on his jeans as he said, 'i wish i could, but i cant' and while in some way she had known that he wouldn't leave, the words still made her sad.  socks and shoes, shirt and jacket. the radiators hummed in her apartment but it would be cold outside. she thought for a moment to protest and then did not. it was just what it was.
at the door frame he said 'again some time?'
'of course'
outside the door he had stopped, just to catch the last few sounds of her. he could hear her moving about the small apartment and he though then that she was an elemental temporarily trapped, but he knew too that all too soon she would be released, again a zephyr.
down the stairs and out the two doors. he turned right to walk through the grey towards ibrox station but the wind was blowing fully, and hard, into his face. with the kelvin running through town, it was almost impossible to know which way it would gust. he turned about and headed towards hillhead, popped his collar to cover his neck, and as the wind led him down the cobbled street for the first time all morning he smiled.
when the door had closed she had lingered a moment, then returned to the record she had chosen 'honkey chateau'. she considered for a moment changing the record she'd picked. its going to be a beautiful momrning, with or without the company, no reason to pout. she started the turntable, danced her way back into her kitchen and opened the refrigerator, reached in and pulled out a cheap bottle of champagne.
happily and aloud to herself she said 'ah, breakfast!'

memories of grey rooms

He had seen him come in, recognized him only barely, it had been years and he hoped that he would pass on by. It had been a long time. But like clouds off the coast purple with a promise, a half hour or so later john walked over, a drunken rhythm to his saunter. he thought then that time tended to heal most things, but perhaps not wounded prides.

He didn’t want to do this. He didn’t want to do it here, with these casual acquaintances, ringing him in this position, and publically it was hard to control judgement. But he didn’t want to do it in general. ‘john, do really want to do this now?’ he said before he could start, ‘its been a long time’. After he said it he thought on it, it had been five, maybe six years, ‘half a decade’

‘yes I want to do this now, I don’t care how long its been, you’

He cut him off, ‘why’

The question halted him but a moment, ‘because you fucked my wife.’

He could have sworn the volume of the whole room reduced, probably imagined. But every head in hearing distance turn, involuntary reaction. He could hear the people behind him, his company, their spines straighten. He hadn’t noticed scott, another name and face from a youth that seemed all too far away, behind john, but he could have sworn he heard his teeth set, molars over molars.

He set his drink down and squared his shoulders to him, they weren’t the same height but they were close. ‘if memory serves me, you’d moved out of your house- left your wife and infant daughter- and moved in with some intern from work’. He blocked out the people, he didn’t want this spectacle, but he wasn’t about to go down as the only guilty party, even if he was guilty.

John’s eyes narrowed, that brief moment where to an onlooker it is almost impossible to tell the difference between whether he would scream or cry. The voice that came out was neither, ‘we grew up together, played football together, why would you do it, you knew we were married still’

He couldn’t imagine a universe where any of that shit mattered, or living a life where the temporary comraderie of a playing field lays the chains of some eternal obligation. Then again he couldn’t have imagined this moment, before it happened, and under the haze of some bars buzzing light something that should have receded quietly into nothingness was dredged back.

‘I saw her by chance you know, I wasn’t in atlanta long, a few months, and I saw her in a bar. And we talked for a bit, she was a shell of herself. A ghost man. As any girl would be when left from someone ten years younger. The post partum depression didn’t help, but you being across town in some other girls bed. She was a mess. So I took her out, tried to remind her who she was, still fun. Still sexy. Still a wonder.’

It had started like that, talks and casual drinks and the occasional stories about high school, and sharing songs, or bands or making idle conversation, and then outside that highlands bar through a taxi window it was a kiss, and maybe it had been all the bourbon, or maybe it was the residue of the romance of their youth, or maybe it was just her vicious need to be again, and nights that turned into weeks without thinking it was making out at every red light, and concerts with his fingers strumming against her thighs, and her car, and that alley, and enough dark to keep all the realities at bay and for just a while be, to be again.

‘fuck you man, you don’t know anything about her’.

That wasn’t true. He shrugged. After he suspected it wasn’t about that. John was reasonable enough to understand his complicitness in that moment, drunk and fool, but reasonable, at least he remember him as such. No, he realized this was about something different, this was about January some time later, when the girls in the bar he worked at told him that there was some girl here, and it was about that the near sheer slip under the black crocheted dress, and the fingers that lingered at the stem of the martini glass she had propped herself up on, and the freckles and the curls of her hair, she had worn when she was young. And it was about the silence afterwards, when he never heard from her again.

‘fuck you man,’ john repeated, ‘you had no right’

‘John, you think I didn’t know she was going to go back to you? That you wouldn’t get back together? You’re her husband. You’re a family. She was never going to be with me. I knew that.  Let it go.’

‘Then why’d you do it?’

Without thinking he responded, ‘you might have loved her best, but I loved her first’.

John swung and he batted it away, john was drunker than even his gait had let on, he had him by the front of the shirt, and with a push put him against the wall.

He wasn’t angry, in that moment he felt again the acuteness of that silence. You can’t fill someone up without emptying youself, and that there was going to be a part of him, always in that grey space with her, on top of the sheets, entwined in her quiet breathing and the smooth brown lengths of her skin, caught up in the fragile moment, twittering at the most fragile part, the end, moments before the collapse. He was suddenly tired. And he let john’s shirt go.

‘Go home to your wife john. She loves you, which is more than you deserve, so it needs to be enough.’ For the briefest moments he could taste her again in his mouth ‘it has to be enough.’