Wednesday, August 18, 2010

Fruit


Daniel squinted one eye to the midday sun and reached up to pick an apple from a tree; a line of sweat rolled down his arm as he released the apple into a basket. A flickering image of Anne's blushing shoulder and lowered lashes played in his memory.

Anne first observed him on a train to Brooklyn. There was something about his white t-shirt above and his youthful sternum beneath. His skin was healthy and brown and glowing. His long legs were braced by a canvas duffel bag and his hands were busy with a novel. Anne craned her neck to read the title, but she could not. She was sure it was something good, however. (They don't publish crummy novels with ribbon placeholders.) In a plastic bag by his side rolled two mangoes and a peach.

The skins of Daniel's apples were honey bleeding into rosy hues. He polished the curve of the fruit with his thumb and took a bite. Leaning against the shade of an apple tree, he gingerly stretched his legs along the orchard floor. Caterpillars had grown fat with their hole-punching of leaves, and some of the fallen apples were bruised and rotting.

In Manhattan, bricks and concrete sidewalks attempted to tame the roots of trees. But New York green was rebellious. Anne enjoyed how carelessly tree roots disrupted, dispelled frail cement, cracked and formed impassable sidewalk mountains and crevices. She placed her hands between the small of her back and the tree and pointed her converse towards the bistro.

He was young, vibrant, alive and in the sunlight.

She felt more like skimmed milk.

Until they kissed. And his lips spread a honey-glow through her limbs.

Friday, August 13, 2010

Impossibilities


"Come here to me," Aidan said and pulled her onto his lap.

* * *

In a high-backed, red velveteen chair Anne sipped her vodka desperately and tried to think of things to say. He clutched the neck of his beer and furrowed his brow at a destination past her shoulder. His knee shook in nervous compulsion.

* * *

They passed a furtive bottle of white wine back and forth on the subway. She liked riding next to him and fingered his sleeve and he called her "Tugboat." Anne folded her hands back in her lap but smiled nevertheless.

They raced aimlessly through Port Authority.

"This way!" he exclaimed and grabbed her wrist. Somehow they were on a bus. The correct bus? They wedged between strangers, as close to each other as twinned popsicles. She giggled on his shoulder and he said, "We fit so perfectly together."

Again, they raced aimlessly through the deserted streets of Hoboken.

In a club. In the back of a drummer's van. Ducking under the turnstile of a train station. Finally in the refuge of a pizza parlor. They had forgotten to eat dinner and ravenously split five slices of cheese.

"I love you."

* * *

"Are you two married? Your children would be very beautiful."

Haloed by stained glass, an elderly Irish gentlemen sipped his Jameson neat in an obscure 2nd Avenue pub. Anne and Aidan felt close under his preening eye.

* * *

As quickly as fingers are snapped, Aidan turned cold. He lashed an icy tongue in jealousy. At something he had seen in Andy's eyes. At the way Anne had turned her head at the bar and let Andy kiss her cheek.

She quietly ran her fingers across his back and waited for him to forgive her. And need her.

His affection was a varied, flickering flame, but soon her collarbone was back beneath his hands because he couldn't live without her.

"My love. Tell me you've never loved anyone like you love me?"

* * *

She promised nothing and pretended to sleep. Over and over again, he said her name into her neck and hair. Then he was gone.

Still, together they could only be covered in snow...

Monday, August 9, 2010

Rain


In his bedroom, he said, "Let me give you a stock of kisses so that you can save them up." And took her face in his hands and kissed every inch of it. Kissed her eyelashes, her jaw, her mouth, her nose, her cheeks, her hair, and the errant tear running along her upper lip.

The rain pummeled the trees outside her late night window, threatening to conjure a Cathy to her eagerly awaiting Heathcliff. Damp, cool gusts invaded her bedroom and crawled across her sheets.

Anne stuck her head out the window to greet her beloved thunder and lightening. She opened her mouth to collect the rain.

Tomorrow tomorrow tomorrow she would meet him!

Soon she would clamor beside him on cobblestone streets. Together they would finger the spines of used books in the basement of a shop. Or stretch their bodies across green grass and squint up at an English skies.

But New York didn't want her to leave.

"Don't go," it pleaded, wrapping its rain-soaked arms around her and wringing at her heart. "It is here that you belong, alone."