LITTLE TIN HEARTS

When I first met you it was though I had stumbled into the picture of a wonderland life.  Everything that appeared as it was supposed to be and everything in its place.  Perfect from the outside in every detail. Smiles for everyone and envy from the outside world for all that you seemed to have and possess. Charming. Utterly charming.  I wandered into this immense house and, inside a small closet, tucked away in the corner, and of almost no consequence whatsoever, I found a heart.

     It was a little tin heart.  So small and so fragile.  It had been left in the corner,crumpled and its paint dull. Dust had collected over the top of it as though no one had paid attention to it in years. And they hadn't. It was completely empty. Like an old Christmas ornament that was nice enough to keep, but not worth repairing or replacing and certainly not hanging on the tree for what it meant. Dented, and then filled from something within itself, but never from those who had caused it.

 So much like my own.

     Why it had been left in a closet as an obvious possession, and still so neglected and inconsequential  was beyond me, but I made it my goal in life to return it to what it once was.  I knew what it was supposed to look like, and while I have not been very good at having people take care of mine, I knew this one could be fixed.

     I took it home with me and went about taking the dents back out of it.  Straightening its small delicate curves and subtle faces until it was capable of holding so much more than it once had.   I buffed the outside until it shone with the light of a thousand suns and then I gilded it and reinforced its edges to withstand what I intended to put inside of it.  When it was complete, I painted it back to its lustrous shine and went about filling it. I had found it when it was not wanted, remade it when it was considered not worth fixing, let alone even noticing, and protected it when it was of little more than crumpled tin to anyone else. It was to be kept.

     Fixing hearts is not as easy as it seems.  Some hearts have become accustomed to what assails them and resist any desire to mend them.  But as long as you are slow and careful with them, and everything you do is conscious and honest, it will begin to look as though the worst parts repair themselves.  As long as the pieces you use are the very best that it deserves, there is no failing in mending a heart.  And this heart was one of those very rare ones.  A heart that, for all of its simplicity, had wrapped its fears and injuries within its internal workings so as to believe they needed to be there in order for it to exist at all. As though compassion required the component of corrosion, and tense anxiety was what defined the motion of clockwork springs and gears.  A heart like this, once it is repaired, can be the type of thing only miracles are made of, come from, and it takes miracles to repair it as well.

     Now hearts can be filled with anything, and self sacrificing hearts have more shoved into them with the sense of responsibility and duty more than with love. Anger,resentment, loneliness, apathy. Sadly the greatest thing it is usually filled with is fear.  But this one I filled with my very soul, and the weight of it, once it was filled would be much too heavy for any man with more selfish  intentions could bear to lift.  I left no room in it for anything else, and when it was finished, wrapped  my hands around it and protected it as a prize beyond worth.  A treasure for which I would give my very life for. Truly PRICELESS.  It was THAT important.  It was important because in returning that heart back to what it was capable of holding, I  refilled mine as well.  My heart filled with my own soul and the promise that it belonged only to one person, and one alone.

     Before I left, I covered the heart  with letters and wishes, of small kisses and promises, and confirmations of its worth and protection in spite of anything that lay before it or me.  Nothing would befall this heart, and as long as it was filled with my soul there was no room in it for anything less. Before I left I knew it to be impenetrable.  Over time the small reinforcements became a chest to hold it within.  The key to what lay inside is in only two places.  In your will to let it out, and around my neck to open it when I returned.  Its key is still around my neck and I would have never removed it.



     Every day that I spend without it is a day that I remember how badly I needed it and how solemnly I swore to protect it.  And not a single day goes by that I do not believe with all my soul that he believes he has stolen back from me what is no longer, nor has ever been,  his right to say he owns. The belief that it can be "owned' at all is enough to question the right to  hold it at all.

     He left it alone long enough for someone else to find and reopen its worth, and all the regrets in the world that he has, are not enough for me to willingly accept he has any idea of how to protect it any more now than he ever did.  Not  then, not now, not ever.  Even if he could, what right does he have now to take it for himself when all I ever did was make it everything it could be?  Have I ever done anything less to deserve it?

     And so there the heart sits, filled with both my soul AND another, and a blackened, resentful fist keeps it.  This is not what is fair for hearts repaired by men who know their worth.

     Neglect the little  hearts of the world if you so desire, but there are those who are more than willing to seek what is only thought of as crumpled tin, and while you may be able to dent them again and again, and to leave them to collect years of dust from neglect, rebuilt hearts, with reinvented clockwork springs, will beat for years longer than you can imagine.

THE LETTER ON THE BRIDGE

                                                            THE LETTER ON THE BRIDGE


     I  left my house and walked. Just walked. Nowhere in particular; just an excuse to leave the din of mediocre silence within a house that was a collection of indifferent and autonomic processes- Accomplished to every one's expectations, but not a single one done with more passion than was needed for anything more complex than a load of laundry or a sink full of dishes.  Passion was something I had traded long ago.  For what, I am not exactly sure, but without it, I often wondered why it was I was attributing success for it at all anymore.  With the roles reversed, would I feel as though I should show more appreciation for what they did than what I felt in myself right now now?

Probably.

     I walked up the hill and turned right on the bridge road that wound its way across the river and on back into town.The view from one side of this bridge spreads out over the water in  steady and even lines on both sides of the river, as though it could be painted with  single strokes from a painters brush. No effort at all. Pretty, yes, but easy. Too easy sometimes.  Too simple to see it as anything more than what it is already was and with little or no expectation to have it change. It is almost always calm and serene and I use what I see from it as a way of reminding me that what I feel good about myself has put me where I am today. This is the side I attribute to accomplishments. My small internal reward and validation of positive choices. Sometimes those accomplishments, however, are not mine alone. I can look at them, and be a part of them, but no more than anything else painted into the landscape. As though it would come as no surprise to have someone view it from the other bank and paint me into it with no more consideration of my presence than is given to  a rock or a tree in the same place. It is a verification that I am an integral component to the universe as a whole, and not separate from it.

     But bridges have two sides as well as two ends, and when I am unsure of myself, or need to find answers, I cross the road to the other side that is much shorter in its view but more active and changing from day to day.  This is the side of the bridge that I hope and dream.  Where decisions are made and where simple reflection gives way to thoughts and actions deeper than the water beneath my feet.

     The sheet of stark white  ice ends only a few short feet from the edge of the falls.  Cold water, dark and smooth, bulges  and swells at the surface as it escapes from underneath before sliding away like molasses and curling over the rim in a seamless and unbroken line.

     The water thunders at the bottom of the falls just a few feet away, and the spray of water droplets stick and freeze to any surface they touch.  Everything beneath the rocks is coated in icy crystals turning simple plants and small shrubs into jewels as fragile as they are priceless.  Great plumes of mist roil and pour into the air, constant,but always changing. Always different, but ever present.  Like streams of thoughts that some point to as being inconsistent and, therefore, worthless, because they are never in the same place.  Others, however, see not the position of those thoughts as being what is important and are instead, relying on the fact that what causes them, is  always present. Thoughts, like the mist from a waterfall, are only possible if a source continues to feed them.

     The pool of water beneath the falls is a mass of sharp and twisting waves. Like flakes of obsidian or a flock of angry crows, their wing tips battering each other for space. The river juts off to the left and then settles into a small curve that finally hooks itself like the arm of a lover before drifting out into the small valley beyond. All the feathers of those angry black birds smoothed into a contended slumber of inky feathers.

     So much like my thoughts and dreams, this side of the bridge has become. More active and changing, but always with a sense of adventure and...passion;  That what occurs on this side of the bridge is not so much a chaotic event with no end, but a fight for that which is just as real as the other side, and paid for with activity and motion and energy. The end result is that both become placid and calm, but that this side can be seen and quantified, whereas the opposite side simply expects to be taken for what it is. Neither good or bad, right or wrong. Who is to say which side of the river is its truer nature if  there is no way to gauge what it is capable of? Do I  admire its current state because of what it is, or do I question it because of its indifference?  It is what it is, but it also, is what it is not.

     At least this side of the river, with its constantly changing and reinventing  of itself and its surroundings brings a sense of desire.  That the landscape the water pours through is just as much a part of itself for what it changes as much as what it does to its environment. To this side of the river, it isn't enough to simply rest along the banks in simple indifference and be seen as a sure thing.  This side of the river thrashes and fights and assures me that what it results in was earned much more than simply expected or assumed.


     I rested my arms on the edge of the round steel railing and just breathed in. As though the frozen air, had within it something I could take into my lungs here that could not be done breathing it in  within the confines of the house.That was a different kind of cold. One that solidified a soul rather than invigorated one.

     As I looked out over the water a small glint of red flashed in the corner of my eye.  Too bright to be a trick of the light, and too small to be something I had neglected to see as part of the view, it was there for an instant and then gone.  Two more, a pink and another red, lower this time, flashed again. As though the thoughts within the mist had suddenly fired a flare or emitted a shower of spark. I realized I was standing on top of a small pile of glitter.  It had been spread out over the ice on the walk, and as the breeze blew, it lifted small bits up into the air.  I looked down at my feet and found a letter in a plain white envelope tied to the railing with a piece of string. A single rose lay beneath it, held firm to the ground by the ice that covered the two shiny green oval leaves.

     I knew it wasn't for me.  No one knew that this spot held any more importance to me than would any other stretch of road to anyone else.   No name was signed on the front. Just a card.  Crisp and clean with no outward bend or mark. "How sad" I thought, that whoever laid this card had so feared that another would find it that they could not put the name of the person they loved at the top, nor could sign anything name at the bottom.

But a card nonetheless.

      I held the card in my gloved hands. It wasn't mine. It didn't belong to me. But I had spent so long in an environment where even remote excitement had become an impossibility. I knelt back down to replace the card where I had found it and instantly felt the pang of a loss that was not mine to possess. As though  a penance had been paid by me already and could read and feel by proxy. I stood back up decided that fantasy and fairy tale were as much mine to dream as it was for someone else to experience and not have.
    
    Curiosity took hold of me,though, and I opened the envelope. The card folded into three sections, and beneath the third fold, a letter slipped out. I very nearly dropped it into the water, but pushed the entire contents to my jacket and fished the letter out from between my gloves and my body.

     Another wave of guilt passed over me as I contemplated putting the letter back inside, unread, and walking away.  Who was I to live vicariously through the love of someone else? I answered myself almost as quickly as I asked it. "I am myself, and I do need love, vicariously or no".  I wanted, no needed, what was inside. I needed to know that what I felt was not unrealistic or selfish and existed somewhere else for other people, even if not for me at the moment. Maybe one day I would, but for this moment, right here and now I needed it, and I was going to feel it.

     It started out with the usual affirmations that are so easy to say. Little affectations that require absolutely no thought at all and can be performed with the automaticity of operating a light switch or a car door.  But as I read, it slowly gave way to a deeper, more difficult, plodding, kind of writing. As though the intention was to run, but that he just hadn't got his legs to catch up to what his head and his heart, was thinking.  Suddenly, it took off in a whirlwind of emotion and I felt myself, actually felt, what it was that was being said.  Not in a way that could be seen as occurring to another person, but to myself. As though what he had written was meant for me. I could feel every word as though it were very real fingers that touched my neck, or caressed my breast, or pressed against my lips in a way that stole my breath from me.

    He did know me. He knew us. Most of all he knew himself more than any other person I had ever read from. A total stranger, with me reading his love letters to a woman I would never know, and it was as though he was standing inside of my own head.

     I stood there, holding a love letter intended for someone else, and yearned to have a heart this pure within me. I held it in my clutched fist and felt the crisp paper as I burned inside with a want I could not have.  The wind blew and small bits of confetti and glitter drifted down onto the frozen river.

     My momentary loneliness gave way to a deeper sadness and regret for all that I was once more than willing to sacrifice. It crept over me in a slow oozing, like tar, and then quickly cooled to a hard and brittle shell. What was left of me locked inside of myself.  And then the grief transformed itself into anger. A blind uncontrollable anger that not only had I been duped into this feeling by someone else regardless of all that I had given, but that I had been convinced that it was myself who wished it for myself. I didn't. My silence was not an acceptance at all. My silence was the only thing left that had not been taken from me by fear of losing something else. When you can't fight, you run. When you can't run, you hide. And when you can not hide anymore, you stay as absolutely still and silent as possible; hoping you are seen as innocuous as a wall or a rock. Prey may be eaten alive at any moment, but no sense in making the inevitable approach more quickly with unnecessary movement or sound. I crumpled more than sat and stared at the letter in my hands feeling it slowly warm my heart until it melted my frozen feet in the snow and set my heart to flame.

Down on the ice, a dozen roses and tulips were strewn about and held within the ice. Locked in place and trapped where they fell. I wept openly and tears spread down my face. No longer tears of grief but of a rage I would no longer contain.

What a loss. That something this kind and gentle had to be left where only one person could see it. Not by those who walked by lifting their head up, but only by someone hanging their head.And it wasn't her. It was me. I was left where only one person could see me, too. And he didn't even have the emotion left to devour what he had already hunted and wounded but would not kill. I envied her. In a way I can not explain, I envied what she has. I say 'has' because there is something far more compelling to a person who can not do what he wishes, and finds a way to do it anyway, than could ever be said by having something and doing little to show it.  I am holding what is hers and she has so much more than me, and I envy her.  God in heaven I envy her and that kind of love.

     I so desperately wanted to keep this card and feel it over and over, but I slipped it back into the envelope and placed it back under the string that held it.  For the next few days I went back every night and reread it. I thought of taking it several times, but simply couldn't bring myself to do it.  Two days later, the letter was gone, but the rose remained. I knew in an instant that someone else had read what I had, someone that was not her,and that it was, again, not who it was intended for. If it had, the rose would have been gone as well. Just like my own life where the pieces that were wanted were taken only in part, and the remainder, left to be disposed of by time foot traffic.

     I burned with jealousy that someone else had taken what I could not, and that the woman it was intended for would never see it. I felt angry that someone else had what I wanted and even more furious that another perfect stranger held it now.

     And then it hit me like a hammer.  Another person read this. A person just like me. A person who may have walked across the same bridge with the same feelings and found what I had.  Maybe she had a greater need of it than I did, or maybe her life was even less than what mine was.  Maybe to her, there are not two sides to a bridge at all. Maybe only one or maybe there is no bridge at all. My mind quickly flashed to an image of a woman trapped on an island not of her own making and was only able to cross when the water froze to a single sheet of ice. Sometimes, there are no paths or bridges at all.

     I wondered what was so important about this bridge and how many secrets have been told to it. Whose secrets does it hold, and are there deeper ones below the surface of the water? Too solid and permanent to be seen even by those like myself who happen  across an occasional one but could not possible understand what they could not see? I had a feeling that this bridge held far more than mere flowers.
  
     Spring came early this year. I went back to the bridge today to look at her flowers one more time.  I chose a good day to do it. I waited and watched as the ice broke free and I watched the flowers, her flowers, break free and tumble over the falls. I stared down through the inky water. Deep beneath the surface of the water, like a star exploding, a brilliant ice white flashed once and then was gone.

     And once again, I envied her.

THE TREE OUTSIDE YOUR HOUSE

I wished I was the tree
outside of your house.
With its broad green leaves
and spreading branches.
I dreamed I was your tree.

I would be tall enough for you
to stretch over your lawn,
and peer down through the window
while you slept.

Watching over you,
a sentinel for all seasons,
Immoveable, and solid.
I wished I was your tree.

But the tree, they said,
despite green leaves and a solid trunk,
was bad on the inside,
and needed to be cut down.

And so they sawed off its limbs
and then cut it in half
and ground the stump to the grass,
but I still wished to be your tree.

split and rendered
to firewood alone,
I would still warm your body.
I still wished to be your tree.

But the wood, they said,
was diseased and unsound
not fit for the heat of the hearth,
but I still wished to be your tree.

Too filled with the beetles,
or so they had said,
to even be left for a log,
but I still wished to be your tree.

The wood, it was loaded
in a truck to be chipped
and shredded to mulch,
but I still wished to be your tree.

Now, it is gone.
Unseen to the eyes from above,
its roots still winding deep and strong.
 But I still wished to be your tree.

Trees, made as they are, above,
as well as below, are twice what they seem,
and sheering the top takes but half.
I still want to be your tree.

Let me stay, nestled deep,
in the ground of your lawn
touching your foundation,not windows.
I still wish to be your tree.

THE QUEEN AND THE SOLDIER- Suzanne Vega

THE QUEEN AND THE SOLDIER-Suzanne Vega
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9f3fzTV7aI

The soldier came knocking upon the queen's door
He said, "I am not fighting for you any more"
The queen knew she'd seen his face someplace before
And slowly she let him inside.

He said, "I've watched your palace up here on the hill
And I've wondered who's the woman for whom we all kill
But I am leaving tomorrow and you can do what you will
Only first I am asking you why."

Down in the long narrow hall he was led
Into her rooms with her tapestries red
And she never once took the crown from her head
She asked him there to sit down.


He said, "I see you now, and you are so very young
But I've seen more battles lost than I have battles won
And I've got this intuition, says it's all for your fun
And now will you tell me why?"


The young queen, she fixed him with an arrogant eye
She said, "You won't understand, and you may as well not try"
But her face was a child's, and he thought she would cry
But she closed herself up like a fan.


And she said, "I've swallowed a secret burning thread
It cuts me inside, and often I've bled"
He laid his hand then on top of her head
And he bowed her down to the ground.


"Tell me how hungry are you? How weak you must feel
As you are living here alone, and you are never revealed
But I won't march again on your battlefield"
And he took her to the window to see.


And the sun, it was gold, though the sky, it was gray
And she wanted more than she ever could say
But she knew how it frightened her, and she turned away
And would not look at his face again.


And he said, "I want to live as an honest man
To get all I deserve and to give all I can
And to love a young woman who I don't understand
Your highness, your ways are very strange."


But the crown, it had fallen, and she thought she would break
And she stood there, ashamed of the way her heart ached
She took him to the doorstep and she asked him to wait
She would only be a moment inside.


Out in the distance her order was heard
And the soldier was killed, still waiting for her word
And while the queen went on strangeling in the solitude she preferred
The battle continued on

MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE

 " Gratitude bestows reverence, allowing us to encounter everyday epiphanies, those transcendent moments of awe that change forever how we experience life and the world"~ John Milton


     So here I was, sitting on the edge of the river holding the papers between my fingers.  Summer was coming, and the warm air brought the smell of you along with it. No longer a memory, but a part of the wind that will never go away any more than your breath on it.  Small frogs peeped happily along the banks and I could hear the sound of your footsteps against gravel woven between them.  A small twinge running along the inside of my palm as I felt the skin of your fingertips against it.  Summer was here, and with it, everything that I knew of you that has made it was now and what it will always feel like to me.  As though I was privy to a special sensory gift that others could not be a part of but that made my experience of it so much more meaningful.  I thought to myself, "They do not know what they do not know".

     I rolled the letter into a small tube and tucked it down inside the plastic bottle I had brought with me.  A message in a bottle for someone else to know what I can not say, but need to have heard.  Will it go where I wish it? I am not so sure, but it will touch someone. Maybe not today, or tomorrow, or even a season from now, but someday.  Maybe it will be read and tossed aside as useless, and maybe it will be enough to twist back inside the bottle to send along its way again.  I didn't know or care. I simply needed to be heard.

     The sun sparkled on the water and the breeze blew across the water turning the shimmering surface into another thought of her and how many times I had completely ignored the sunshine if it took away from what I thought of her at that moment.

     I tossed the bottle into the water and watched as the breeze blew it out onto the surface of the water.  It bobbed gently and then the wind took hold of its surface and pushed it toward the small spit of land that jutted from the side of the bank.  For a moment, I thought that  my attempts to send what I felt would be denied by the gods themselves.  No sooner in the water to be driven back onto the sand to be rejected and forgotton.

     I looked out across the water to a group of campers on the bank.  Just a few men and women, seemingly unaware of each other but together, nonetheless.  The men sat drinking beer while the woman stood around wondering why they were there at all if not for something they wished for themselves. A slight pang of anger for what I hoped they were not thinking of each other and another of jealousy, for my wish to be where they were now with someone else.

     The small bottle seemed  as though it was held static by an indecision it had made on its own.  The breeze blew it against the sand, and the gods sat impartial for one brief moment to allow the water to guide it around the spit of sand and down the edge of the rocks further down the beach. Its first obstacle averted, it slowly drifted to the center of the water.

     I sat watching it.  Hoping that I was not just deluding myself with feeble attempts to feel her or that by spending my life in a lonely contemplation had somehow become a catharsis to which there was no ultimate solace at all. I missed her.  More than anything else in my entire life I missed her.

     The men on the beach had begun to argue about something and distracted me. One stomped away toward his tent while one of the women attempted to ask what was wrong.  He barked at her and she recoiled visibly.  So much for wishful thinking. Nothing like having your innermost pesimisms proven by an outward display of disinterest.  She walked up the bank and sat on the rocks looking out over the water.  The man grabbed another beer and walked away both from her, and his friends.  As though somehow, the argument between the men had managed to be inflicted upon the two of them.

     The small bottle, its top poking out of the water, drifted toward the reeds by his feet. I felt myself hoping for the second time in twenty minutes that Fate was not trying, once again to twist my thoughts away from me, by having this journey end before it even started. As though the very thought that I had a wish to express what I felt was enough to have yet another thing come up against me.

     He looked out over the water and I watched as he watched the small minnows jump on the water.  Something caught his eye and he looked down by his feet.  His eyes locked onto the bottle. DAMMIT.  I cursed the gods. I cursed Fate. I felt a rage boil into myself at being snubbed by everyone and everything.

     He fished the bottle out of the water and looked at it through the green plastic. The cap spun off and I wondered if he realized that it hadn't even been a half hour before that it was screwed on.  His finger poked into the top and carefully removed the pages inside.  I sat watching him as though feeling that his expression would , once and for all, tell me that I was a fool to love at all.  Tell me that everything I feel and know is a simple contrivance of my own pathetic mind and that no one else would even begin to grasp the desperation of it. Strike me dead where I stand here and now and show me that I have nothing. How does a man become judge,jury, and executioner of  love for a woman?  You put it into a bottle and stand before the anonymous bench like a man waiting to be condemned.

     He read each page.  Then turned it over and read them again. I won't tell you what was written inside but you have read it before.  For just a moment, the whole lake seemed to dim.  As though what he read had suddenly brought something into focus by making everything else blur.  Sun and water, and rocks becoming nothing more than trivialities to what it was that suddenly awakened within him.  What he had thought or known just 3three minutes before suddenly changed by a perception and an awareness he had no knowledge of.  "You can not know what you don't know" I whispered across the water to him.

     The man looked back up the rocks to the woman he had yelled at.  Small and insignificant, even to herself, she was no more consequential than the rock she sat on.  A footnote to a day.  But suddenly he was aware that the blur around him did not affect her. Epiphany, like change, strikes on the wind, but it takes but a breeze to feel it.

     He took the bottle and the paper back to the camp and then walked straight past the others who had already forgotten the insults to each other and were now building new grudges and insensitivities.  He stopped by the truck and pulled out the cooler and rummaged to the very bottom. Past the beer he felt was so important before until he caught the edge of the berry coolers she had put in first.  Not because he had, but because he had neglected to even consider what she wanted. Almost forgotten beneath the pile of beer.

     He walked over to the rocks where she sat and handed her the cooler.  Talking quietly back and forth, I could see the changes in her face. Anger, distrust, sadness, all of them rippling over her face like sheets on a laundry line. He handed her the bottle and then the pages from inside and she began to read.  She read the same as he did and even turned them over just as he had.  When she was done she nodded.  Something they said between them caused her to nod again and again, and then he began to nod as well.  Shared epiphany.

     He leaned in to kiss her and then she handed the pages back to him.  He shook his head and attempted to hand them back to her. No fighting this time, though. A conversation and a difference of opinion without the fear of judgment or retribution.  Together they rolled the paper back into the tube and slid it back into the bottle.

     She stood up on the rocks and looked out over the water.  So much like him a moment before. So much like me two moments before that, and so much like the woman I loved did when I thought of writing this in the first place.  The small breeze blew against her face and she hurled the bottle back into the water to be carried down past them again. As she did, she caught notice of me standing on the opposite bank. No words between us. Just a small smile.

     "Mission accomplished" I thought to myself as I walked away from the water and climbed into the truck to drive home.

A DAY WITH HER

      He had asked for her  to set aside a day.  Nothing planned, but something he could do on the fly, and have it feel as though he put all the thought into the world in order for her to feel it for everything she meant to him  and nothing less. Not because he could exact a payment from it or an expectation. Just for her because of who she was from him because he felt it.
     She drove her car out to the parking lot where he asked her to meet him. A small note had been attached to the antenna of her car with a small black and red ribbon  "Bring nothing but you, my love.  I'll make sure I have what you need."
     She jumped into the car and as she slid into the passenger seat she was met with the warm smile that always jumps across his face at the sight of her. "Does she notice it as much as I feel it" he thought to himself.  He had already stopped to get her a cup of coffee. He leaned over to kiss her and hold your hand,both of them taking in the smell of the other.  She always had the unique way of completely overpowering him with the closeness of herself, and to feel the mood of his car change from hard and utilitarian, into a cozy nest with only her, was a wonderful feeling. He was very aware of it like no one else could, and associated the feeling with so many other places within his mind as much as he did her presence in the car. Complete and total.

     She tilted the seat back and quietly sipped her coffee as he drove from the lot and out onto the first of small country roads.  The sun shone in through the window and he enjoyed seeing her with her hands wrapped around the paper cup, the steam curling off the lid as she  looked outside.
     They  didn't need to say anything just yet.  It is that time when it is simply enough just to be together.  To know that the majority of the effort has already been returned by the happy calm that comes merely from the company of the other.  She sipped her coffee and let her eyes wander out  over the wide fields as they rushed by. Long, thin ribbons of inch deep snow are all that remain of the winter deep beneath the trees and along the shadowed edges of the rocks.  The faint hint of green grass already peeked out of the bare ground beneath.  The flowers along the fronts of the occasional farm house telling them that despite the cold wind outside, that Spring was here.  Soon every rolling hill would be covered in tall green grass and the roadside would burst with color from flowers. Some places more than others. He inwardly smiled at the bags of wild flower seeds he had spread in the Fall where she usually walked.  She didn't know it yet, but she would.
     He turned the radio up and put a CD in he had made for her.  Nothing special, but something to let her feel Spring the way he would have liked her to hear it as much as see.  She smiled again at the thought that the song she  listened to did just that. She slipped off her shoes to lean the seat back.  Looking over at him and reaching out to run her hand along the side of his neck and then up on to hi shoulder.  Her way of saying 'thank you' for what it is she sees and feels, and hears, but mostly because of what she knows of him without either one having to say a word.
     The car weaved around and over one long hill to another.  The clean black pavement slowly stretching out before them and leading down into small valleys where rivers of cold snow melt rushed over the rocks.  Huge torrents of water churning downriver. 
     They stopped for just a moment on one of the bridges so she could unroll the window and listen to the sound of the water as it rushed past the pilings underneath.  Down on the water line, a group of deer poked and nosed through the short sprouting grass.  One raised its head at the sight of the truck and wiggled it's ears at her.  She smiled,knowing it had nothing to do with her, but felt the happiness of  wild animals close enough to pretend so.
     Driving with her was so much fun for him.  Much like anything else they did together.  Not because anything unbelievable would or should occur, but because of the reality of the opposite.  That the simple act of driving in a car next to someone who makes the journey worth it, is a reward so very often not recognized for its worth by someone who sees it as nothing more than the time spent between here and there. A simple task of necessity.
     WThey drove along one road and then to another, with no particular destination in mind as far as she knew.  But he knew better, and had planned her lunch on a small field next to the river not far from here.  The trees overhead were  just beginning to open their leaves as they traveled alongside the river.  They talk quietly about nothing in particular and it makes him happy to see her feet on the dashboard working and knitting against each other.  A sure sign that she is happy and content at the moment. Safety is felt on the insides of her as easily as socks rub against her soul.
     She is so very loved for all that she is and all that she brings out in him.  Not because of what she ison the outside, but because of who she is much deeper than anyone really cares to look. Even herself.  Because when everything is said and done, he goes  to bed each night with that unbelievable feeling of happiness that he is  in love. And not because she had to do anything other than be who she is to him. She is adored for the simplest things that she,herself, would not think could ever be enough to cause this feeling in anyone else.  But they do, and because they can, require her to do nothing but be the love of his life, for nothing more than being the love of his life.  So simple. Sometimes, it is tragic to think that something so deep should be so much more complicated in order for it to mean more.  It is the opposite. It is the simplicity that gives unfathomable depth to it in a way that can not be explained to anyone except by the feeling of it. Like explaing sight to a blind man.
     He pulled the car into the small parking area off the road.  He had  packed them a lunch early this morning and put it into the back of the car along with three blankets and a pillow.  We spread out the blanket and take out lunch and a small bottle of wine.  The high rocks on the other side of the river blocked the breeze and the warm sun poured over and into the blankets as you pull off your sweatshirt and lay down on the blanket.  She leaned up with one arm tucked underneath her to support herself as he  took out the fruit and cheese and bread.  Nothing very special, but just enough to give them time to be together.  He lay down next to her and kissed her softly.  His hands on her shoulders feeling the warmth of the sun against the softness of her skin.
     He loved kissing her.  That electric spark that he could not fight and didn't ever want to.  The feeling that when he parted his lips to accept her tongue into his mouth that there was no surer sign that she was the love of his life.  Let them talk and pretend and deny to the high edges of heaven about whether they should or not, but when his lips touch hers, he KNOWS that she is the one for whom his heart beats in his chest.
     He can not help but be aroused when he is near her.  He found it funny and often joked, and was just as likely to pretend he didn't notice  as much as she did to rub against him as if she didn't know it.  It is a comfort to the both of them to know that they are both aroused for themselves, and that they awaken the thoughts of it in the other.  It is a desire fueled even more by the fact that it isn't necessary to show their love, but  made all that more special by the knowledge of it.  She kissed him slowly and her hand pulled his shirt up to run her hand up his warm muscled back.  The feeling of herr fingertips on  bare skin causing him to gently push his hips against her. 
     When he is aroused next to her, she became so much more than a mere body.  It is the feel of her hair against his face as he kissed her neck.  It is the smell of her and the combination of soft skin over muscle.  Most of all it is the feeling of release within her.  That slow inexorable unwinding.  Like a coiled spring that suddenly releases underneath him.  Those soft warm playful eyes that suddenly transform into deep dark pools of desire and sexuality.  He looked into those eyes when they are like this, in love, and he can see all the way to forever, back when he first loved her....a thousand years ago....and up on through the end of every life they will spend as her love.
     It isn't uncommon for him to feel this way more than her, but it is one of his most favorite things to see her lose herself in the moment and go where even he didn't expect. The place where he knows she exists as a more complete and radiant person. So much more than the sum of insignificant parts others see and can't possibly comprehend.
      She softly tells him that there hasn't been a single car to pass by and did notice that they can't see the road.  he leaned his head up to look and she took the opportunity to pull  her sweatshirt up over her head and lay back next to him.  As though the opportunity exists that someone might see but that she trusted him enough to have found a spot where they wouldn't be bothered and snuggled her naked body closer to him as if to say that the possibility still existed but she didn't quite care anymore.
     He had made love to her a hundred different times and in too many places to count, but every one was different except for how he felt when he was  inside of her.  Her body curled around him and accepting him within herself.  Allowing herself to be out of control and accepting that she  was utterly safe as she did.  Her body undulating underneath him as she allowed him to part her thighs to push her open  and inside of her.  The soft mewling pleasure giving way to more forceful and needed release.  Her hands pulling him in and out of her until the slow rhythmic pleasure welled up inside of her and her body shuddered and contracted around him pulling him over the edge to dissolve into her.
     She no longer needed to tell him to hold her as she did.  It needed only to be total and complete and have as much of him against her.  He needed to hold her as much as she needed to be held, and nothing gave him more pleasure than to know that his desire to be loved by her resulted in the feeling that washes over her.  It is a full return of her own worth.  A realization of what she herself give to him.  It isn't a simple act to satisfy momentary urges.  It is physical proof of the absolute love within him.
     They napped quietly in the sun letting the warm sun drift them off to sleep.  He cradled her face against him and felt her long smooth legs against the length of him.  And those soft little feet, knitting together by his ankles.  She drifted off to sleep and he listened to her breathe against his shoulder.  Her heart beating against him and feeling the gentle pulse of her wrist around his neck.
     The sun had tilted only slightly in the sky.  Far less time than it felt for such a comforting sleep.  It was as though they had spent the entire evening entwined within each other and got to enjoy the feeling of waking up in the arms of the person who loved you enough to have it occur without a moment wondering whether it was worth it. All in the span of an hour.
     On the way back he found a different road so that every mile was a way forward rather than back.  She mentioned  that she had the munchies and he tells her that there are Wasabi peas in the glove-box.  On top of the peas was a small card.
     She took the card out of the envelope and looked at the front cover.  Its was a small card with a  winding road on it next to a stand of trees and a small bridge. a little farmhouse with flowers planted out front. He  bought it a week before and thought that it would be a nice thing to do. He wrote on the inside of the card for her.


" I wanted to find a way to tell you 'thank you' for a wonderful day.  Not in the beginning of the day, because that would be presumptuous.  And not at the end because that would be expected and would lose the importance.  I wanted it to be right in the middle of our journey where it would mean the most.  Where it would be most meaningful by telling you that all that has happened so far has been a joy to my heart and that the world is so much more wonderful with you in it to share.  I wanted it in the middle, right next to something as trivial as a can of peas, to remind you that I haven't stopped noticing who you are to me. Even for a second.  Everything I do in my life is made more full with you in it. What I do, should always have you knowing that it is done for you because of who you are, and not because of what I could gain from it."

   Sometimes He could tell that what he had written, was exactly what she needed to hear without him having to say anything.  She often got that wonder and awe at what he says, and,  for as much as she wanted and needed to believe it, she would send what is seen or felt of him into her past experiences to see if they rang true.  Experience was her most callous critic, and she had become accustomed to being let down.  She was always afraid of it, and hoped sometimes that when  it came time to quantify it, and it returned to the surface of her mind,it would have something attached to it that  would reveal what he had done as flawed or untrue.  But when it traveled that deep inside of her and came back clean, with no doubts hanging from it, a feeling of relief washed over her. He was exactly what he said he was. Not because she asked or expected it, but because she did neither and it came anyway.  When mere words came back as fact, and what he did could be shown as real.  These are the times where, in small consistent ways, he made the most progress.  That she came to see him as exactly what she wished for and needed, and amazed that it is was close to perfect as she could have ever dreamed.  When wishes and dreams come that close to the person that needs to give it to you, fate intervenes, and puts those two people together regardless of the adversity. It is an unerring collision of need combined with the desire to accomplish it for what it means to both.
     He pulled the car back up to the lot and kissed her one more time. He  tells her that he loves her, and reminds her that his wish is for nothing more than to have the entire world know that she is loved, but that it is worth more to him to have her comfortable knowing that fact is safe within him.
      She climbed into your car, and he wondered to himself if she knew how hard he tried to keep sight of her as she drive away.  As though even the side of her head was worth more to him than simply driving away without it.  He had been in places where he had watched her taillights fade to almost nothing sometimes.  Just two tiny red specks on a dark horizon. And still....it was enough to keep him looking for just one second more.
     he would crawl himself into bed and surround himself with the thought and the smell of her.  He would will let her run through his thoughts and my dreams because when she is there he did not feel afraid. He did not feel scared, he felt loved, and he knew it was what he needed more than anything else in the world.
                                       I

A MEMORY OF FALL TO REPLACE THE DREAMS OF AUTUMN

                                  A Memory Of Fall To Replace Dreams Of Autumn




    "Delicious autumn!  My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns."
                                                                        George Eliot



      I picked her up In the truck early in the morning.  The sun had barely begun to turn the sky from the deep blue black of twilight into the veiled indigo that faintly illuminated only the highest thin and wispy gossamer clouds.

     We had planned today much like anything else we have done in quite a while; on short notice and expecting only what would come  by chance.  Chance, however, had always seen fit to shine upon us more when opportunity became scarce.

     I slowed the truck to the front of her house just as she pulled the front door closed.  She was dressed in her warm jacket and a small head band to pull back her lose hair.  No matter what she wears, her body always looks as though her clothing would not do her justice, but a pair of blue jeans approximated the closest to perfection.  She shouldered her small knapsack and smiled shyly as she walked to the truck.

     For a woman I have learned to love as openly as I have in her, we have always made the same playful small talk when we first meet.  A small "hi" and a shuffling of bags and a quick recap of the morning, but all it ever takes to drop the cordial amenities is a kiss that says that we are both here with who we need more than anyone else and exactly in the place that we want to be.

     She removed her red knitted gloves I had bought her last year and held my hand as we drove to the first place we could find that had good coffee.  It is the small unfolding of the morning with her that brings me so much happiness.  First things first, to anyone's morning, is to get that which we need the most.  With her in the truck and on our way to coffee, it is only her near me that makes the bleary-eyed drive to the shop seemed almost trivial now.

     We talked quietly about what it was that we wanted to do today.  Fall was not coming to any more than our Summer had, nor the Spring we spent alone believing we could be less to each other by our decisions to stay away.  As though simply by the doing of it would in any way change what we always knew was there either way.

     Today was a day to reconnect in the way we had in the beginning.  By accident, and with absolutely no expectations as to what we thought would come of it.  Our love started in a way that no one could understand because it came at a time when we weren't looking for, and became all the more important because of it.  With no demands and no critical criteria to stop us from doing so, love came at us on tiny soft feet and turned into something so much more amazing because of it.  The excuse that love found while looking for it somehow cheapens it, does the exact opposite when it is found when you aren't looking.  It elevates it to a point of unbelievable proportions simply in its unfolding for what it truly is, rather than what we think or make it what we want.  Most people define their wants and then conform who they find to fit the model they design.  Sadly, the expectations of perfection are far too critical in its demands to make love possible at all.  It is a force feeding of wants to be catered to until failure is all that can be wrought from it.  Either by the one who realizes the futility of expecting a new  person to live up to grandiose demands,or by the one who fails in achieving it continuously.  but with no model, it simply is what we found, and changed us in the having of it.  It opened itself for what it was and allowed us to walk into it to see how love for one changes the perception of the other.  With no demands, it was ours to build in what we found in each other.  New, and clean, and free from anything except what we allowed to fill inside of us.  And it filled the parts that no one else ever knew existed.  Not even ourselves.

     But Fall was not coming.  It wasn't here yet. We had felt what Autumn was inside of us with the other near, but situations would make for us to miss yet another.  We would not be able to feel the magic of Fall as it is seen in the eyes of the other, and we were not about to allow our environment to dictate to us what our hearts needed.  We would chase Fall back to to its beginning;  to where it had already started and take for ourselves the unfolding of Fall as much as we took from the unfolding of my love for her, so long ago.  If Fall will not come to us, we will go to Fall.
    
     A small latte' cradled in her hands, we drove north on the highway as fast as we could.  What we saved in an hour of driving through the end of Summer would be made up for being able to feel all of Fall when we got there.  I drove the truck East, to Vermont.
     While we drove, we began the reconnecting that always seems to take half the time we expected it to.  As though by our absence we had expected damage to be repaired before more growing could be had.  But it is always such a comforting peace to me to know that this woman never loses any of her spark or fire in my heart, and the time we thought would be spent on the repair is suddenly what springboards us into deeper love.  It always grows, and never lessens, and my love for her is more and more assured with each passing moment.

     We read the newspaper and playfully joked with each other.  Small jabs in nothing but adoration that lend to a deeper comfort of ourselves in the eyes  other rather than an undoing.  We sang to the radio, and then I sang to her, and then she reminded me that she is so much more enamored by my desire to sing to her, than my ability to do it well.
    
     I will simply never be able to explain, both to you, and to her, what her face does to me when I look at it.  She is so many women to me, all rolled into one.  She is, and always be now, my very best friend.  That is the face that could have been anyone for what she is inside to me.  But she is the comfort of my Mother for her ability to hold me safe and protected.  She is the playfulness and wonder of a little girl that makes me always want to find another thing or place that causes that sparkle and joy in her face.  She is the face of my most cherished heroes and when I see what I admire in them, it is her face I put to it.  She is the face that illicites passion and lust and arousal.  I have a painting in my room that I have always seen as the most beautiful and proud. I had it painted from a small picture I found in a magazine nearly twenty years ago.  I looked at that picture and realized that she has so many features that I found so attractive to me.  The same  curve to the tip of her nose.  Same angle of her cheek.  The same one eyebrow that can convey so much of her feelings.  But most of all, it is her eyes that I have been completely lost inside of.  Eyes that can twinkle and  shimmer in happiness, and then suddenly deepen into a mix of darkness and desire.  Eyes that no one truly understands the depth of.  Not even people who have looked into them for years.  I look into those brown eyes, and I can see from the edge of her lashes...to the very end of my life.


"Oh, stop there".

     She tapped the inside of the glass with the tip of her fingernail making a small click that brought me out of my very pleasurable distraction.  Her feet were pulled up against her chest and she looked out to the side of the road as though she pointed through the glass at a display in a museum.  A curiosity that she was more than accustomed to have pass by her life as simply as a want or a dream unattained.  One more look on her face that I have never stopped enjoying is the sudden realization that her dreams are enough for me to shift what she looks at from the side, to be the very thing that I will drive straight toward and let her feel and touch.  Her dreams are important to me, but only as the impetus to make them a reality for her.  Dreams unrealized or unfulfilled are a complete and total waste if there is not a person who would do anything to make them a reality and give yet more space for more dreams.  If there is nothing I like more than to hear her dreams, it is to make them true.

     A small gravel turn off led through an opening in a split rail fence to store front. We stopped the truck and she stepped out into the gravel and thought to herself how many times that sound has been described in one story or another to her.  Perhaps because it caused in him the same feeling she felt now as it worked beneath her shoe.  That the small crinkle and fold of hard stones sought   the best displacement against the weight of her shoe when she kissed him.
      An antique store with a large front porch bristled with every conceivable trinket; A wooden  sea chest with a great arched lid, a carved chair, rolled rugs, and even an ornate hall tree carved with  two loons on the surface of a quiet lake above the mirror.  She smiled warmly again as she ran her fingertips over the wood, and felt the echo run through her. No dreams. Memories.  Her smile didn't go unnoticed by him nor did the sound of it. Even through the breeze that rustled the trees above the porch.
     We stepped into the antique store hearing a small bell attached to the top of the door.   It jangled and danced on its spring as she stepped through the doorway onto the wood floor.  The smell of furniture polish and of old newspaper; of lives and history, all held within, waiting to whisper their secrets to those who would stand close enough to listen.
    We walked among the pieces of furniture and held each other close.  Just far enough apart to reach and touch the things we found of interest, but close enough to share what we thought only with each other.

 A small quiet woman said hello from behind the counter and we both said a cheerfull "Hello".  She has always been such a polite woman, but in the presence of both a stranger and myself, she wears two hats at once, so well. One that implies that she would never do anything outside the limits of good manners with regards to a stranger, but never so much that she doesn't imply exactly who she is with and how much he is cared about.  It is a quiet pride in herself that I am who she loves, but not in a way that only but the most aware would see.  And maybe that is another one of those things I see in her that many do not.  That she can imply such  a deep affection for me without making the need to show it so apparent.  And those who do notice it, are that much more impressed with a woman who can do that so well.

     We finally walked through every room and said our 'thank you's' to the woman, and then we stepped outside to walk to the coffee shop.  The same happy jangle as we entered the door revealing an identical bell attached to the door.  From behind the counter, the very same woman appeared.  We all laughed at the obvious frequency with which she must have pulled this little stunt. She obviously owned both stores and it was but a few steps to exit one store and enter the other through the hallway between the two.
     The similarities with both stores, however, ended there.  This room had the same floor boards but it's smells were completely different.  The coffee sat in  jars behind the counter pouring out a variety of scents to mix together, but all unmistakably coffee.  A wide glass front display cabinet blossomed with bread and pastry.  It came as a surprise that this woman could find the time to bake as much as she had, and made us wonder who could buy it all to make it worth it.  As if almost reading our mind, she replied that the majority of people come in on their way home but that the middle of the day is very quiet.  Again she answered an unspoken question before we said it by adding that we had it all to ourselves.
     I ordered a cup of coffee and she ordered a cup of tea and a small pastry while leaning her head against my shoulder.  Her  hand holding mine and curled to her chest as she explained what she wanted from the display case.  She handed both to us and explained that there were tables outside if we wished to take in the last of the warmth that would be had for awhile.  Knowing that warmth, both from her and the last edges of Summer were what I wanted most, I pulled the door handle and used the bell above as my only answer.

     We walked to a small table with an umbrella and scooted two large Adirondack chairs a little closer together.  As we sat sipping my coffee and her tea, with conspired quietly together as we always have, she ran her hands over the wood and down to hook her hands at the edge of the arm rests.  The warm Fall air giving way to an occasional crisp breeze.  The sky had become that deep bright blue that seems to go on and up forever in only the way a Fall sky can.  The light that would normally make a summer bright shifted slightly south that made shadows a bit longer and colors softer.  I have always been in love with her eyes, but in Autumn, the sun seems to see fit to allow me to see the warm brown color of her eyes rather than the radiance of them in Summer.  They hold me to her with more deep affection and true love than the excitement of any other season.  Her eyes in the fall are the closest to what she holds inside, and if I were to tell someone when to see her for who she is the most, I would have them meet her in October.

    Talking with her as my equal is something that I have come to adore.  She can look at me without having to wonder what I  really think or do not say.  She knows that what I say to her is plain and un fettered by fear of judgment, and only tempered with restraint in how I present it to be honest and polite as well as truthful.  She can touch me with affection without it being sexual.  She can feel and express comfort and happiness in a way that says that she truly knows what she means to me.  Maybe the best way to explain what it is like to be with her, is to get someone to understand that I do not see her as another person at all.  She is simply a better, more refined and beautiful  expression of myself.  Not to make light of that at all, she adds to me the other half that can not be opened by anyone else.  When I am with her, I feel like a whole person loved for every part of me, and not just one part or another; wanted, but only  in its own time and place and always to someone elses expectations of use and not as a total person. She knows all of me and Loves what I am, and I know all of her and love what she is.  Try and expect something like that as a preconcieved expectation of a relationship and you will spent a lifetime in unresolved misery.  But find that in a person like this woman, and you will understand why I simply have no desire to ever look anywhere else in my life except to a person who loves all of me and lets me love all of her.

     She sat quietly listening to and feeling everything that she could of the moment.  Slowly tearing away a dream and replacing it with a hard fast memory.  She slid her back lower into the chair and rested her feet on the edge of mine.  As if to say that she had absorbed everything of the experience, she replied a very simple statement that, as do most things in her small reflective voice, implies far more than  what she says.
  
  "I like these chairs.  These are the kind I want. Just like these."

     I stood up and kissed her forehead through her hair.
     Someday, I will buy you a set of chairs just like these."

     I went back inside after her first cup of tea to refill her cup.  I watched her looking out over the woods and all of the colors that she needed to feel of a Fall.  The stubborn green of Summer holding in stark contrast to the reds of Maple trees that ran from crimson down through subtle shades of ruddy purple, and to peach . Yellows and golds that bled and faded in every hue through orange, and then on to browns of hazelnut and then finally to chocolate.
   
    I love to watch her when she thinks I am not; the reflection on the window hiding me from her view.  She crossed her legs and spread her legs out across the length of my chair and let Autumn cover her.  Fall is so very often associated with the end of things.  But to me, and I hope to here, it is always going to be a beginning.  It was when I first met her, and then it was when I had said I would love her forever, and then when I decided that I would endure both the ice of winters and the cold shielding she would need in other places in her life.  To me, Autumn is the time of reflecting on all that she has become to me, and the promise that there is simply nothing that can occur during a 'Winter of Discontent" that would not bloom again at the dawning of a Spring or the awakening of myself to her at the asking for it.  Autumn is when I would ask her to marry me. It will always be Autumn that I feel her the most for all that she is to me.
     The lady at the counter pulled me again from my thoughts of her.
    "Does your girlfriend need anything else?"
 
     The automatic assumption threw me off guard and I quickly attempted to back peddle before I even spoke a word.

     "Oh she's not my girlfriend. ... But she's my best friend.  Well so I guess she's a girlfriend but not the... I mean I'm not saying I wouldn't but..."

     It frustrated that she had caught me between what I truly feel for this beautiful woman through the glass and what I am so accustomed to pretending in the face of others.  Truth be told, she is so much more than anything I could ascribe to her as a title.  Because for everything that she could be to me, she has surpassed the criteria for every single one.  And any name I give it, would do nothing to explain what it is she has done to completely dash the usual definitions with what she has become to my life.
    
     She looked at me with a very knowing smile.  It twinkled out of the side of her face and erupted into a 'Mona Lisa' smile as she turned to pour hot water into her cup.

     "It isn't what you say, sweetie, that made me guess she is  your girlfriend.  It's how the two of you go about doing it, that goes so much farther than anything you could say.  I've been watching the two of you through the glass just like you look at her now.  And I've watched hundreds of pairs of people come and go in this little shop... but I see very few couples.  Couples aren't just two people.  Couples are people just like you and her, who wouldn't be anything close to what they by themselves as what they are when they are together."
     "Is it that obvious?"

     She set the tea on the counter and added,

     "When a woman looks like that with you at her side, the way she did when you came into the antique store next door, I had no doubt in my mind what you were to her.  When I saw the two of you outside and they way you compliment each other, I knew you could make it look like to others what they thought you  felt inside.  But when you came in here... and looked at her without her knowing it..., I wouldn't doubt it in a million years that she isn't exactly what you think she is."

     I smiled sheepishly and looked back out through the window at her as I replied, "Well, okay I admit you're right and  she is my girlfriend.  In every sense of the word, she is."

"Oh, no, I was so wrong about the two of you."  Like I said, I've seen people come and go in here for years and years. A man who would come in here and answer, plain and simple what I asked, would have been a boyfriend.  What you two have there...is way more."  You see, a boyfriend can answer anything anyone puts to them about their girlfriends.  Something so much bigger can't.  Someone you can't define has to be explained by what they are, in something else entirely. Something like glass front store windows like me to see what you can't say."

    She pointed at the window towards the most beautiful woman I have ever seen or felt in my whole life. I softly admitted that for a person who seemed to know exactly what I felt about her, that I was utterly at a loss for words when it came to getting someone else to understand it.

"Never stop loving a woman who puts you at a complete loss for words, son.  And I always walked away from the ones who felt they could.  The best ones to keep...are the ones you stumble around on your words for like your in a room of marbles."

     I thanked her again and had a hard time with two hot cups as my  eyes tried to see through wet eyes from knowing that finally another person had seen what I so desperately wanted the world to know and knew how badly I loved this woman; how so much of what I felt about her could be seen by how we are together, and not what just I could say or explain. And most importantly, not by me or by her.  By someone who knew us no more deeply than could be learned in ten minutes.

     I returned with her tea and sat down  when she replied that she liked her tea "Just like this".  Again those three words, and this time I resolved to make this part of our trip be more than she expected.  I made the excuse that I forgot my keys on the counter while I had been talking with the woman inside.  The truth being that they were still in the truck ignition, but it gave me time to go in and purchase something I had seen in the antique store.

     I re entered the store and quickly explained what I needed from the display case in the other room.  She left and quickly came back with an iron hat pin with a ladybug on it.  She had missed seeing it tucked up in the corner while we held hands in front of the display case, and I had planned on getting it for her before we left, but it suddenly had a new purpose.  At one time I am sure it was  very shiny and bright, but age had rusted the flat iron of the pin.  I paid for the pin and then made an additional purchase of permission before I came back outside.
     She still sat in the sun in the same position as she had been before.  I gave her the small pin and explained where it was in the case.  As always, it is the small things that hold the most weight to her.  I explained that in addition to the pin, I purchased a special permission along with it from the woman inside.  As if on que, the woman came out with a small candle on a tiny dish.  She smiled a too warm smile that let her know that more than simple small talk had passed between me and the woman.
     I took the long end of the hat pin and held it over the small flame in the candle.  The metal immediately turned black with soot, but there was no mistaking that it was too hot to even consider touching.  As it heated in the candle, I slowly twirled it back and forth until the heat was even all over its flat surface.
    
     " I wanted to have another special way to have you know that I will always remember you right here exactly the way you are.  Slide off the chair and hand me that rock, love."
    
       She had a look of total confusion on her face wondering what the heck I was up to, but without question got up off the chair and stepped over to the flat palm sized rock at the edge of the patio.
    
     I paid for the permission to put a special mark on this char for you."

     Suddenly realizing that I was not crazy nor willing to purposely deface someone's property, she stood next to me and waited until I asked for the rock.  When it was sufficiently hot, I reached for the rock and slid the iron ladybug onto the top of the rock and pressed it hard against the under side of the armrest on her chair.  A quick hiss as the metal burned in past the laquer and then deep into the wood as I slowly rolled the rock back and forth to get the whole impression burned into the wood.  Smoke curled around the edges of the armrest and gave the faint scent of a fireplace before being carried off into the woods.
    
     When I was done, I set the pin onto the ground and she knelt down to look under the armrest  at my handiwork.  Burned into the underside, was a perfect ladybug.  Its black spots perfectly smooth circles against the raw pine of the boards.  As if to assure her that everything was okay, I waved through the glass at the unseen woman inside. I knew without seeing that she knew I could not see her, but she would wave back anyway.

     We finished our drinks and she went inside quickly to drop off our cups before leaving as I went to start the car.  When she returned, her eyes were slightly wet and I asked her if everything was okay.  She smiled and laughed and replied in the only way that I know to be true under any situation.  "Perfect" she said. "Everything is just perfect".  There are so many ways that this woman can tell me one thing and have me know that things are not that good, but 'perfect' is a sacred word to me when it is spoken by her.  It is a word that has no double meanings, no hidden innuendo.  It is perfect, and nothing more.

     We drove in through the woods and watched the piles of leaves scuttle in the street in front of us blown by the breeze, and then billow out behind us in wake of yellows and reds,  Past fields of pumpkins turning a deep orange and along the edges of cornfields already picked of their harvest but left to dry still in the fields.  We travelled through one small town after another weaving in and around one small hill after another until we came to our first covered bridge.

     I slowed the truck and let her climb out as I fished into the glovebox for my camera.  I closed the door and heard the soft echo of her voice as it echoed down and then back off the wood of the bridge.  She stopped to lean over the railing and looked down into the cold dark water beneath her.  I snapped one picture of her with her elbows resting on the railing, and another of her raising her foot back behind her as she looked out across the valley.
      I do not get very many opportunities to take her picture, but of those that I do, when she knows it is me who takes them, she is always happy.  Sometimes quiet, or pensive, but always happy.  And not happy in the way that others are so very good at pretending when they are anything but or required to 'make nice'.  My pictures of her  show joy as a part of her face that simply can not be separated from her happiness.  She often fusses about her hair or how she looks when I take pictures of her, and is more shy with me than she is with others, but I always hope that it is because she truly understands that when I take pictures of her it is because she is the most beautiful woman I have ever seen, and it is not her shyness at taking a picture that she shows to me.  It is the shyness that she knows what  I think of her whether it is with a picture or not.
     We stood against the railing and leaned in close to each other.  She hooked her arm around mine and then the length of her leg to wrap around me by my foot.  She looked at me and her face softened.  She never has to ask me to kiss her.  Her voice never really saying quite fast enough what her body can show to me.  I leaned in to kiss her and felt, for the first time that day, a kiss that defines so much more than a simple hello or goodbye.  These are the kisses I dream of at night.  The ones that start as small and warm, soft against my own lips, and then suddenly melt and relax into a total acceptance of the two of us together.  These are the kisses that build within us so much more than a simple act.  They are the kind of kisses that turn my soul over to her and remind me that I feel so much more of her from the inside.  They are hot and passionate and they scare me with the power that comes out of her from them.  Were it not for her hand on my face to give me a direction I could recognize, my feet would come out from underneath me.  I sometimes wonder, when she asks me if she is worth all that we go through to be in love with each other, if she truly knows how close she is to bringing me to my very knees simply by her kissing me.  If there is anything that brings me to this place in my heart, it is her lips in the Fall.  It is Fall that reminds me of exactly what I have done for this woman. Fall. Just fall.  And keep falling, because there never has been nor will there ever be the sudden stop. I just keep falling...and falling...and falling.

     As if to let me know that she heard every word I thought, she looked into my eyes and said, "This is the Fall I needed.  So far it is exactly what I wanted without having anything be what we planned.  I just needed Fall with you again."

     I nuzzled the soft skin of her neck as I hugged her tight against me feeling her entire body fit into the other half of me.  I didn't say anything more, but thought as loudly as I could and hoped she could hear me.

"Fall for you, all over again. To fall for you...all over again."

      She peeled away from me and led me by the hand out and away from the railing.  I picked up the camera and asked her quickly to do something do something sexy.  She cocked her hip to one side and threw her head back like a runway model with one hand on her hip and the other held in front of her. Perfect.

     "Now do something funny or unexpected"

     She twirled around once and then stopped facing me and lifted her shirt exposing her bare rounded breasts to me.  In the brief second that I saw her through the camera lens, she melted my heart with the incredible sexuality this woman can display in the blink of an eye.  Simple and gentle, and then suddenly exploding with a sexuality that I still can not geasp.  I thought to myself that this is a picture I will love forever.  Beautiful and proud, sensual and sexy, carefree and impulsive.  Everything that this woman is to me captured in an instant.  I was so stunned I forgot to take the picture.

     We drove on through the small towns and across rivers and streams.  Every moment etched into our lives forever and becoming more and more of what we always knew was there within the other to be felt in ourselves.  If today began as a way to save what we thought we could lose, it only went farther to show that there simply was no end to all that built within us.  The sun began to dip low into the sky, and I began to worry about whether I should ask if she wanted to return.  I had no desire to take her back at all, but I was too afraid to ask.  I let the minutes pass by one after another.  The truck continued along with the two of us in our own little world, and I wanted nothing more than to drive for the rest of my life with her.

     Around one corner, we drove into  a town that must have been pulled from a postcard.   A number of brick shops clustered around  the center of town and a long wide park with a gazebo and a bandstand attached to it; its walkways manicured but covered in a thin layer of  crisp leaves.  Without a word from her, I knew that this is where she wanted to stop.  I pulled the truck to the side of the road and quickly found a parking spot to leave our car.
 
     A small cafe on the corner square reminded me that I had not fed this woman since this afternoon.  We went inside and into a small dining area with only four tables.  None of them occupied by anyone else.  A deep rich red carpet covered the floor and each table was made to sit only four people tightly.  For two of us however, it was perfect.

     We talked between the two of us and watched the leaves blow around outside the windows.  Occasionally people would bustle on by outside  from one place to another.  We ordered to glasses of wine and became so involved in what we had to say to each other that we hadn't even picked up the menus.  The waitress left a loaf of bread and between the two of us and satisfied ourselves with the warm bread and wine to such a degree that dinner seemed almost unnecessary.  We did manage to order a salad and split it between the two of us and two bowls of soup, but it was readily apparent that we were having too much fun being ourselves to need anything more.  It should come as little surprise that all we wanted was more time together in a place that at least gave a minimum of food to share between the two of us.  We whispered quietly and sipped our wine and the waitress even seemed pleased that she rarely had to bother with us at all.

     We made a limit of two glasses of wine no matter what we ate, but nursed the second ones slowly as we plotted and schemed on wish after another.  None of them beyond the realm of possibility just so long as we both wanted them.  Her foot curved around my leg in that spot that means as much to me as her kisses do.  Her fingers alternating from the rim of her glass and then back to the table to let me hold her hand as we sat and listened to each other and the soft music playing in the background.  The only other food we ordered being cheesecake that we also shared between us.

     We walked from the cafe and out onto the small brick lined sidewalks out toward the park.  We stared in through the windows of the closed shops and held each others hand.  a walk with her has always been a pleasure because it always gave me an excuse to talk with her, but when a walk with her comes in a place where I don't need the excuse of walking, we become the lovers we always knew we were to each other.  The moon slowly peeked out over the trees like a giant opal and shone  frosty white against the tops of the trees against the deep blue of the night.

    We talked about everything and of nothing.  Of things we knew were important only to each other.  Each word becoming so much more than simple sentences linked together.  It was a way of showing that what the other was to us was something new and different every day.  And all of it loved.  But there has always been something new.
   
     She smiled at me as we slowed to stand before each other.  She put her arms around me and held me close to her face and asked me something I had never really heard her say.

     "Show me something new.  Everything you do you for me is a new way to see the world.  I want that right now.  I am going to give you ten minutes to invent something to show me something in a way we have never done it before.  Show me something in a way I have never seen it.  I have to go do something, but I will be back in ten minutes."

     She kissed me once and spun off into the night.  I worried about her for a moment, but she had something set in her mind, and talking about it would not change that.

     "Ten minutes" she yelled from across the park.

     "Ten minutes?" I mumbled to myself. It's amazing how effortless it seems to bring a happiness and a wonder to her on a whim, but ten minutes on the spur of the moment is going to make the gift of ten minutes seem like the blink of an eye.  My mind reeled.  What on earth do I have to work with here? Christ I'd give her the universe if I could but...
     The Universe.
     Could I?
  
     Quickly I ran to the car and got in to drive it to the edge of the park.  I steeled myself for what I was about to do, but time was running out.  Is the woman worth the universe as I want to show it to her?  The answer was instantaneous as I shut the lights off and nudged the gas pedal to ride up over the curb and drove into the center of the park.  Finding the most wide open spot in the park with the largest view of the sky, I parked the truck and pulled a blanket onto the top of the truck.  I dug through the center console until I found my MP3 player and quickly scanned through for the piece of music I wanted her to hear.   I had started doing this once a week as soon as I had left her; when winter began and the constellation Orion was still high in the sky. On a small hill top in the middle of a small village thousands of miles away, I listened to nothing else when I thought of her.  The entire breadth of the sky open to see, and me, alone underneath every star.  Not just the hundreds we see, but thousands. Tens of thousands. Cold and dark, I watched Orion and thought of him as the time keeper.  night after night until winter had ended and he slipped over the horizon to be replaced by the Big Dipper.  It began its slow climb into the sky that reminded me I was coming home to her as soon as it was high above me.

 I ran back to where she left me and waited for her to return.

     She returned in exactly ten minutes.  I smiled at her and let her know that although she may not totally understand what I had decided to give her in ten minutes, that I hoped she would like it.  As I walked along with her toward the car I hoped that we would have enough time to do this before the town policeman arrested us both. Small price to pay, though.
     I led her up onto the top of the car and instructed her to look into the sky.  To forget that we are looking up, and instead see herself as being in any position she chooses.  That it is gravity alone that holds us to the earth, and that we may as well think of ourselves as suspended beneath as much as we are stable at the top.  But either way, I wanted her to be able to see the universe as her own.  Because who can lay claim to something so wide?  And if that is true, then who is there to tell me I can not offer it to the woman I love?
     I turned the music on and laid down next to her and held her hand.  And let her listen to the music as I gave her the universe.  Too large to put in her pocket, so we will leave it in the only place large enough to hold it.  But as it was given to her, it is hers to call her own. I only offer it to her to play beneath and hold my hand.
     For so many people, this is supposed to be a sad piece of music. But when I hear it, I see and feel everything that I am so far beneath. Small and insignificant in the face of things so far above and beyond me except for the comprehension of them.  It has always reminded me of her when I am alone without her. More than any other song that reminds me of being with her, it is this one that reminds me of the complexity in things so simple to understand them if you see them as a point of awe rather than as something to be harnessed and controlled.
     As I sat holding her hand and letting a sky she had seen a thousand times before unfold as something completely new, I was reminded at the one thing I find I love in her more than anything else.  It is simply awe.  An awakening of a perception rather than something new to learn or see.  To view it from my eyes and share it in a way that she can hear and see and touch no matter how far away it is.  It is this sky that held me to her.  It is The Big Dipper with its great handle stretching thousands of light years across and now dipping into winter that told me seasons far more than a calendar.  It is Orion that now rises from the opposite side of the sky to track across the heavens that are now hers.  The full moon that reminds me of warm nights spent in her arms and counts each month I yearn for her, and even the stars that I have wished on every night.
  
     long thin skittering clouds raced across the upper edges of the sky and across the moon; like a silk scarf paying off the edge of a woman's neck as the breeze blew the leaves across the grass beneath us.  And off into the sky the millions of stars suddenly stopped looking as though they were on the flat cobalt canvas.  small hillocks and valleys of stars, billions of miles across, now for us to see as though we were merely holding hands in front in front of a landscape instead of ever space between ourselves and the edge of creation.  The great cloudy arc of the Milky Way showing us our own tiny patch of the universe beyond our comprehension.

     "I don't know if this is what you meant..." I said as I leaned over to kiss her "...but the universe is all I could think of on such short notice"
   
     She kissed me back and whispered, "Come and make love to me."

     "Here?" I asked, wondering if she really did intent for me to make love to her on the top of a car underneath her own universe.

     She smiled and laughed quietly.  "No. I went to the Bed and Breakfast down the road and got us a room.  I don't want today to end.  I haven't felt all that Fall has always been to us.  I want all of it.  I want all of you."

     I kissed her once as my way of saying "Yes. Always Yes." and slid off the truck to help her down and into the truck.

     We drove back out of the park and turned the lights back on as we bumped out over the curb again and then down the street to the large white Victorian  Bed and Breakfast.  She tossed me the key as I reminded her that we didn't bring anything at all to spend the night.  She walked over to me and kissed me gently and said, "And since when have we ever spent a night together that we needed anything but each other?"

     I had to agree with her and followed her into the inn and up the curved staircase to the top floor of the house.  I turned the key to the lock in the door an opened the door for her to step in before I followed her.

     It was a rather large room with an equally large bed covered with a fluffy down comforter.  A gas fireplace had been lit on the opposite wall surrounded by a large mantle.  Only one small lamp by the windows illuminated the room.  The rest was only dimly lit.  A large Persian rug spread out in all directions from the front of the fireplace and went all the way to the edge of the bed.

     She stood by the side of the bed and waited for me to join her.  We said nothing but she leaned in to kiss me quietly.  Just like before, I could feel the world tilt to one side as her lips touched mine.  She nuzzled my neck and then stood away from me silently.  No small talk or nervous conversation this time.  She simply looked at me as she knelt to untie her shoes and then stood again as she kicked them off her feet.  With absolutely no shyness in her face, she reached down to the bottom of her sweater and pulled it up over her head.  She walked back to me and unbuttoned the top of my shirt to kiss the skin at the edge of my collarbone.  My hands slowly wrapping around her waist and then up her back to unclasp her bra and expose her breasts to my bare chest.
     I knelt before her and felt the warmth of her hands against the back of my head and shoulders as I opened the button and zipper to her pants and slid them off her shapely hips and down off her legs.  She stepped out of them as I neared her ankles and then rose again as I kissed her thighs coming back up.
     It is a very rare thing to have her head so close to my waist, and I prefer her to never feel that I have any desire to have her there against her wishes.  But she did the same to my pants standing and allowed her hand to circle my waist before sliding her hand down across my ass to push my pants down far enough that I could step out of them as well.
   
     We tumbled into bed amid soft kisses that quickly became heated with passion.  Everything about making love to her and being made love to by her is something that becomes something completely different no matter how or when we come together.  Sometimes it is quick and short with nothing but desire and want to feel love, and others it is slow and careful, but it is always with my desire to please her and her to please me than the other way around.  To feel her offer up her body to me and know that I will not be satisfied unless I can offer mine to hers in the same way is to truly know what it means to make love for what it is supposed to be.  To trust that this woman wants more from the experience by having me feel it from her being the very thing that fuels me to do anything but give to her before I allow myself to feel it from her.  It is a reflexive act between us that shows the both of us that for as wonderful as it is to be in a reckless abandon, that it is nothing unless we have carried the other with us to share in the release.
     We make love slowly at first.  Feeling the slow building of arousal by the simple closeness of one another.  To feel muscle and soft skin held in any position that lends its way to a deeper feeling of closeness.  Movement only needed to increase the sensitivity, but always requiring slight alterations to our bodies.  Movements that allow for the scissoring of long smooth legs and hips that undulate the most sensitive parts to brush against the other in delicious promise of a more heated embrace.
     Breathing increases and small light caresses that give way to a more pressured touch signalling the need to spread legs and to reposition willing bodies into an embrace that requires penetration to quench unbridled passion.
     Her soft smooth thighs parting to allow me to nestle between them and run the length of me hard and stiff against her warm wet lips.  The pleasurable nudge of pleasure that erupts from the friction of two bodies preparing to take one another to places that can only be had by the recieving of the other for all they can offer of themselves.
     Her lips open and unfold as the warm length of me gently spreads her open.  Up and down the length of her wet and heated opening to the inside of her body, my stiff dick probing her outer lips to feel the slick muscles writhing that will stretch around me and pull me up inside of her to that spot that touches us both.  My hands spread to grip her beautiful round  ass to me as she pulls me up inside of her.  Each ring of muscle rhythmically coaxing me up inside of her to be held against her cervix.
     Slow and careful she guides me in and out of her pussy. Kissing me and allowing both ends of her body to turn us into one tight sexual circle where there was no beginning to me, no end to her.
     This is not how a person makes love.  This is how two people feel love for exactly what it is they feel all day long, every day.  It is not the take of the other that defines the love.  It is the giving of ourselves to the other in the way that we do that makes what returns seem incomprehensible when it is described to anyone else.  They simply do not understand it.  They have never learned that when a man gives of himself what he can to the woman he loves for all that she is worth to him, the understanding of her own weight and value is assured. It is no longer a wondering if she has within her what it is to be loved as a woman. It is assured. To have a man slide the most erotic and sexual piece of his body inside of  the woman who touches him the way she does, is to truly know love the way it it was always expected to be, but so rarely found.  It is only when it is seen and felt for its true nature does a person understand what love, and being made love to was intended to be.  All the fairy tales and noble notions of undying love, suddenly become as real as anything else.  It is an opportunity to turn  dreams into  reality, Wishes into memories, and expectations into fullfilled promises.  Being driven to orgasm is no longer the goal as most people would think it.  It is a headlong pitch into the very soul of another person, and to think of it as anything else while this woman pulled me in and out of her body is to misunderstand what it is that arouses me about her in the first place.
     Passion always lends its way to more forceful embrace, and the desire to please always matches that which she feels within herself.  Hot  and wet with desire to feel me, and excited nerve endings firing one after another running the length of her smooth muscled walls drive me harder and deeper inside of her.
 
     She holds me to her and I have no other desire to hold her against me, her head cradled against me, as her body no longer holds anything in reserve and she erupts into pleasured bliss beneath me.  Her hips violently thrusting me in and out of her to feel me    cumming inside of her at the same time.
     This is why she is different.  This is why we are different.  Not because she has to do anything for me.  I want NOTHING from her except to be able to give  back to her again what I feel from her.  Not a single expectation except to be able to hold the one who holds me as well as she does.
     To me, an orgasm within her is not the end to an intimate act.  It is the beginning to a warming comfort  like a feeling I have never known.  That I am safe and loved for all that I am and that what I return to her is felt the same way.  She is the world to me, but when I am with her, there is nothing left of the world at all.  It is all gone except for what is against me.
      She falls asleep, her head cradled into the pocket of my shoulder, and drifts off into a dream that is nothing more than the plan to another memory.  She sleeps with her foot rubbing gently against the top of mine and reminds me that there has never been a moment where she didn't feel anything but love from me.  She will never wake in the middle of the night and wonder to herself, alone in the dark, if she loves me more than I love her.  She will never close her eyes with anger or resentment boiling inside her as long as I am the one beside her.  She will be held throughout the night for everything that she is to me, and feel that she has to earn anything of what she recieves.  To sleep in the arms of a lover who can truly love, is to understand the difference between what we have found in each other, and what can never be understood by people with lesser degrees of comfort.

    Two weeks later there was a ring at her door.  She got up off the couch, slightly irritated at the intrusion, and opened the door to be met with a delivery man.  She signed for the three large items now sitting on her porch.  A hall tree with loons  carved over the mirror and two Adirondack chairs.
     She had the delivery man move the hall tree into her house and take off the packing.  As he did, she put s tea on the stove and eagerly waited for him to leave.  She now had new plans for the next hour.   The truck trundled away and carrying her cup, slipped into the chair and let the smell of mint fill her nose.  as she sat alone, watching the Fall meet the house, she relived the day spent with him.  The day he let unfold, exactly the way she wished it to be. A dream that became a reality.  The understanding that for as much as this man hated her to live in dreams, that he was just as adamant about turning them into memories.  And memories are so much a different think than dreams.   Dreams are only what we wish, but memories are what are made of dreams.  She sat quietly listening to the rustle of leaves and feeling the crisp air that said fall was here.  Maybe not how she truly wanted it, but more than she would have expected.  She then ran the tips of her fingers across the flat smooth wood of the armrest to curl her fingers beneath the outer edge.  She set her cup on the left arm rest in surprise.  Beneath the rim, a small ladybug was burned into underside.  Unseen to anyone but her, but there. To remind her that she is never alone, always loved, missed dearly, and always the woman who will come to memories in happiness and joy more than he will ever let her dream alone.