something you wouldn't believe if you saw it.

11 May, 2004 6:12 p.m.

You know those things you think about doing with a special person when you're alone, when you're not in love? Like walking barefoot in August, sitting on brick walls and letting your toes play with one another, or writing your names in the sand surrounded by hearts, or wrestling in the snow until your noses are raw-pink, drinking hot chocolate together and watching old black and white french films on tv. Like the brightness of memories from childhood, only you feel more impatient for this reality, because it's more important, more urgent, more promising than what came before. But when you find someone, it's always like . . . sitcoms and the dining dead on Fridays, bitching about long days at work, and donning suits and little black dresses to feel whole.

Except . . .

Except when you find something that feels more real than that, and what's more it's better than all of those little colors you noticed in childhood and even better than all those stories you read about what love is supposed to mean. To tell you about it would be to only contribute to the myth, but the myth is what makes hoping worth it, isn't it? The great love stories you'd always hoped would be real at night when you listened to pop music in the darkness of your room. With that in mind I give you this:

.normal things are better with him in my bed. It's easier to write intelligent, well-composed research papers, and lyrics to all the best songs sound that much more meaningful when I can cast my gaze sidelong and see his hands curled under the sweet angles, lips soft. And it's not even sexual, I swear to you, but it makes me smile.

.eating chinese food on the dorm room floor in t-shirts and underwear, discussing gender politics, standing by the window together to smell the rain.

.we turned off the light and created our own private black out, watching the lightning strike from one edge of the window to the next, illuminating the rain falling away from the gutter straight towards our eyes.

.turn your body into the landscapes that I see when I'm asleep; long roads lit by clear skies and crescent moons, mountains, your body leaned into mine, all rendered in blue marker against pale skin that pressed off later, with our sweat into the sheets and on the creases of my arms.

.someday soon I want you to tell me your fantasies. Maybe tomorrow. For now, I'll settle for your voice sliding away into a slow hiss as you tell me how it feels, as the electricity lights the world around you.

.things that give me the slow, syrupy feeling of satisfied sleep: bad 80s sitcoms at 4a.m., laying in the grass in august in the afternoon, making love to you; my favorite feeling. this is why i don't mind falling asleep awkward on the couch and why it doesn't feel like wasting our time together with my head leaned in against your neck, sound.

I dreamed about you last night, sitting in a puddle in yellow boots, driving in the rain. You were up until dawn, mind somewhere else.

Maybe tonight, we'll get it right, dream together about canyons and butterflies.

If not, we have all the time.

previous next

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Hey--what's going on? - 11 April, 2008
I wasn't cool - 30 July, 2004
something you wouldn't believe if you saw it. - 11 May, 2004
Going to 17th and U - 27 April, 2004