Waiting Outside On A Ride After A Final

Clouds hang low and heavy-gray
against dusky smoldered skies
humidity so thick it weighs you down,
a childhood security blanket clasped
too tight against the throat.
Summer’s so near you can almost touch it,
gray skies bringing it in from the gulf
everyone all dewy with that southern belle glow
and those Bermuda shorts that just won’t die,
a moist promise in the air.
Lulling drum of air energizes and makes sluggish
drawing sweet heavy-thick sighs from mouths,
’til time itself is drugged
spinning long days, and closed-in nights,
stirred up emotions, and harboring no peace.
The Wind carries a strong edge tongit,
a simmering unhappiness lurks beneath the lull
which smacks of an inherent, subversive malice;
and I wait, uneasy; unable to grasp this response
something so internal and dark and vaguely primitive.
The evening drives boys to bottles and fights,
girls to lights and a temporary balm for the vulnerabilities,
and lovers spring up with the first sweet-corn shoots
while I wait, listening for the first hard gulf breeze
that contains the realization underlying the air.

Crush

The sun shines beyond the stones
inside the droning narcoleptic prison
is one who wishes for the rays
remembers the moment in the night
the sweet scented flesh
in the dark.
The gentle sleep-rhythm
lovely hurt remembrance locked away
private viewing only for you today;
gorgeous torture was an hour’s perfect innocence.
Here I will stay
incessant thoughts of what is gone
as everything else passes by
nothing changes only waiting
he is gone into the distant eve
and I stop eating breathing sleeping.
Never ending dreams of black hair and gentle breath.

Lazy Chicken and Evaporated Milk

S* continues to text me once or twice a week, despite my lack of response.  He never calls, only corresponds in that stilted, abbreviated language of cell phones dominant today. 
 Movin bck 2 BR.  Want 2 meet 4 drink?
     At twenty-three years old I am a dinosaur, unwilling to use my mobile for anything other than making calls.  Plenty of tecno-savvy, mind you, I just can’t find the appeal.  Typing out cryptic messages on a tiny keypad that results, inevitably, in something devoid of meaning and resembling the vernacular of a grunting Neanderthal.  In years past, I would have seen this as an opportunity to rebel, raise my lily-white fist up in protest against the man.  Anti-texting would have been my cause to take up, my soap box to shout from, blathering on about the evils of abusing the English language to any poor soul dumb enough to listen.  The unfortunate by product of two parents formed from the tumult of the ‘60s who accidentally conceived a child too late in their lives.  I swear, my mother must have leaned over her ballooning belly to talk to me, whispering stories of bra-burnings and anti-war protests.  By the time I came of age it was the ‘90s, and there was nothing to protest against, so I gave up beating my fists against whatever scalded my temper.  My sixty-two year old mother, however, still threatens to dig her picket signs out of storage on occasion.
      I’m not ignoring S* because of any text-messaging principles, though.  I have no beef with those who walk unseeing through the office halls, eyes glued to crackberry screens and thumbs dancing nimbly over miniscule buttons.  More power to those who cannot go on vacation without their PDAs and wireless internet.  If S* could break the text addiction long enough to pick up the phone and actually call, I’d likely silence the ring and delete the voicemail without listening to it.  There’s no point to it.  The person he’s trying to reach doesn’t exist anymore.
      There should be some emotion accompanying my actions, but all I can muster is a vague impatience.  Just the slightest tinge of guilt, perhaps; then nothing.  My whole aversion to the texting phenomenon, though;  now that tickles my thoughts.  Refusing to text is only one of my technological sins committed as a child of the 21st century.  I don’t use the camera on my cell phone either, don’t subscribe to Myspace.  I don’t drink, don’t go out, don’t abuse anything illegal, don’t curse within the earshot of impressionable children.  Two years ago, this sort of behavior would have been nigh unthinkable.  Two years ago, I was coasting through college and getting stoned before work, drowning in hard liquor after, then loosing entire three day weekends to a blackened haze.
      Now my days are caught up in the mediocrity of the young professional.  Awake at 6:30 every morning, shower, dress, arrive at the office at promptly 7:45.  Spend the morning doing anything to keep my brain occupied and not running out of my ears, a liquid rush of flesh succumbed to boredom (case in point, I am typing this at work right now).  One hour, precisely, for lunch, usually spent chain smoking at the bookstore a block away, if it isn’t too hot.  Back to work for four more hours of entry level drudgery requiring an IQ a shade or two below the mental retardation level.  Out the door at five, home by five-thirty to let the dog out.  Cook then consume dinner with live-in boyfriend, watch a little TV before heading to bed and fucking said live-in boyfriend.  Sleep, repeat.
      It should be as boring as it actually sounds.  The thought of such a routine would have made a younger version of myself scratch my eyes out in horror.  I’ve become one of those stable people, those whose lives revolve around a routine of work and life, both unremarkable and interchangeable.  The younger me would view this life with a mixture of pity and contempt, ice clinking in the glass as I contemplated the misery that must surely accompany such an existence.  I know this because most of my old friends view me this way and no longer call (or text).  I know this because the girls at the office look at me with a similar look of disgust, when they invite me out drinking, teetering before me on their heels, breasts propped up on display.  I thank them, and always decline.
     Occasionally, the old restlessness does rumble around in the recesses of my brain and kicks up a fuss.  But it’s always surprisingly brief.  After clicking off the stove, I walk to the back where he’s sitting at the computer, feeling antsy and uninterested in the dinner I just finished cooking.  I tell him it’s ready;  I made his favorite.  Exhaustion from his day rolls off his shoulders in waves, hunched over the keyboard, and my feelings of discontent mysteriously evaporate.  His hair is a mess of angles from spending too long under a baseball cap, too long spent between hair cuts, and a receeding hairline.  I shouldn’t like it, but the mess of it is so familiar. 
      He leans forward and wraps his arms around my waist, hugging me close, but loose.  Always so careful with the strength held in those arms, taut along the line of his wide shoulders.  He rests his head upon my breasts, and the world turns silent for a moment.  My fingers are tangled in his hair before I realize it.
      “You okay?” I ask, soft.  It startles me, this private vulnerability he only displays for me.  Effortless, the way he lets me inside all the way into his core, the raw flesh of his emotion laid bare.  He’s unbreakable, and not just because of his physical size; and yet he lets me see all the tiny barbs of hurt.
     “Just tired,” he says.  I continue feeling his hair with my fingertips, soft and fine tendrils.  Here, there is no discontent, no restless urge to move about, go out and shake the world up a bit.  Everything else is simply gone, turned to white noise far off in the distance.  I’ll continue to ignore S* texts and decline offers to hit the bars, and I won’t miss it.  What’s the point?  When here, in the most unremarkable of moments, is everything the endless nights promised but never delivered.  Here, in the fragile melding of flesh and bone wrapped around me, my hands in his hair, the earth still beneath my feet.