We had arrived there on roads much like the only roads we had ever known. Those that nursed us and weaned us onto a solidity unwelcome in the nursery and its rhymes. Meter remained around the manicured curves, artfully rounded and free from pesky hangings that shadow and provoke the comfortable beauty of suburban opulence.
When we arrived where we had never been, we found a stout barrier removing us from the cool water below: a berm, over-engineered as a testament to the unnecessary.
Above those waves, those unburdened by the wind and distance to reach the existence of a wave, we lay on a larger wave of grass and soil and surely boulders below. We glued our eyes on the stars, still too young and bashful to do what those young hearts desired: to stare into each other’s night-stained irises until the moon rose on our sub-nocturne repose.
We haphazardly chose this particular seclusion with the expressed purpose of witnessing a little more clearly the streaks of light that stain August skies. Our need to stay by the other’s side was not spoken, nor needed words. It was nothing so cliche as an electricity that linked us, a static build-up waiting for a proximity to discharge its vivacity, but a radiance that grew as our separation lessened.
It was never until we got so close to touch that the pain which always accompanies the pleasure of heat forced a check and a pause before plunging into the searing delight of the fire. But my grasp could not be stayed. I pulled you in til we were hip to hip, until a pivot on your side would bring your tender belly to mine and your lips to hover over my breathing and a love too new to know itself. We kept our backs flat to the ground, too shy of a transcendent love. We kept our eyes on the sky, too shy to be overwhelmed.
With the eyes of a child, a child at 19 years, with those sorry eyes I witnessed a shooting star of such utter brilliance that all others belie the name. Only in the light of three noonday suns would that infant infatuation be shone through as the sham and shadow that it was. Of course then we could not see it and could not be blamed, for there was nothing to see.
Then I wore the pockets of a younger man, loose with youth and carefree with too much life, or perhaps the impression of life. Then I carried, I held onto items worth having but too easily forgotten. Then I let a part of me slip into the body-warmed grass and stay in the pervading dark of an endless night.
We had arrived with a knowing and left unaware that we were unaware of the inadequacy of all that I was and all that we were. But half a creature stalked behind us and crept into the bed of the truck, leaving its twinned parts behind.
The other half lay in the cooling grass, and warm as it was, invited the dew that began to fall just after midnight. Or perhaps it fell the hours before, for something coated the immanent heat that overhung us like an awning, protecting us from the natural discomfort of those simmering days.
Our love and that thing that lay behind lost all lingering warmth that might distinguish the living from the dead. And though its brother accompanied us still, death’s stink whispered our names from behind.
A feeling often strikes forgetful folks who have not established the rhythms of certainty. The tick of an independent man forces him to unconsciously pat this pockets to ensure the necessities of life are on his person: keys, cash, card, and increasingly, his phone.
Only he with needs that o’erstep the most basic may find himself seeking for, pining for that more essential thing that fell from his life when he was too careless to keep it with him.