Perfume

I smell you in the strangest places.
With my window down, driving.
Jogging through the park.
The store today, the game yesterday.
A bar.
It's intoxicating and I'm still drunk.

Fall

Falling.
Much more in love than I'd like to.
And that's odd, really. Because I'd like not to.
We're driving. And I've been drinking. And that's not to say I'm driving after drinking. I'm listening, as a passenger. After drinking. And we're listening to music, and there is an amazing guitar rift and I find myself ghosting it, air guitaring it. And while doing so, I find myself in love.
The feeling isn't original, very regular, hardly new. It's fall and I always fall in love in fall. And that's weird, because it really should be happening in spring. But the coolness of it all just gets to me, the chill of the night, the loveliness of everything, the oranges and the violets in the dusk sky.
The beat beats faster and faster on the radio and there is bass and it sucks me in, my conscience, and there is something oddly mesmerizing to it, familiar, sympathetic and deep, drifting, gliding, as the golden leaves of the trees in fall fall, hitting the ground and crunching beneath the world.
My heart falls as I listen, floating to the ground. I'm grounded, I think, and realize that I'm thinking of you.
We listen to the flux of the radio.
And I'm dancing with my shadows.
And I think of your face.
And then my life.
And you in it.
I should have kissed you. But I forgot.
And I'm sorry.

Sanctuary

A year to the day. That's when I had peace. Work and live in the Rhineland, a dream of all dreams. When I'm there it seems my whole entire life away from the place has been a life spent in exile.
Is it strange that I feel more connected to a place that has never been my home?
In the afternoon sun, on top of one of any of the many hills overlooking that corner of the world where Germany intersects with France, that's when the breathing feels the sweetest. That's when you can inhale and feel life entering, exhale and let it out. This is a place where a trillion wars were fought. Where Rome stopped. Where unrest lay. World conflicts started. I remember one night a friend of mine reminded me of that: "What does this place you go to look like? Can't look like anything worth anything. Dirty, disgusting place." That night he was the drunkest man in the state and the alcohol was talking. He can't understand. No, no body can, really. Hardly a graveyard. No where near a barbarian cesspool. Nothing of a wasteland. Far from ordinary. It is sanctuary, on top of any of the many hills.
Peace.
Thoughts.
Recharge.
Exhale.
It is all less sanctimonious these days.
So I yearn. I miss my home in that corner of the world. Pictures, they help to reflect. And I smile. But yearn.
For sanctuary, in the strangest place in the world to find it.

Soul Aid

Staggering down the sidewalk as I walk he catches my eye, which I can't hide, stands upright, straightens, smiles.
"My friend," and it's a thick Irish accent. "Can you spare a few quid?"
I'm feeling generous, and it's Friday and everyone should be able to buy a drink or two.
"Take four."
I hand it to him, he smiles, I walk away, he waves, screaming "God bless ya!" and wheels around, making a pump motion with his fist, smile wide.
It's the little things that make the sun shine brighter, just like when you called.
It was right after I had a beautiful burnout, lingering smoke and all.
Your voice felt good, if sound can be a sensation.
Helped clear the air.

A Matter of Time

The top of the world is the best place to see the sky.
That's what she told me as she led me through her bedroom window, onto a ledge that led to the slanting part of the roof where we scrambled up the side, to the top.
And sat.
It was late and the night above had already grown out of control.
Staring up my eyes adjust and focus.
The moon, almost full, a little empty at the top and the sides, is bright, pale and blue, the craters like pock marks on its face. The stars are milky white pimples soaking through the black blanket; the smaller, more distant pin pricks barely visible, drowned out in the growing night portrait. They are the most distant of distances. Light years away. Where time is tomorrow, or yesterday, another matter entirely.
The world comes into perspective.
Galaxies fill my view, tentacles swaying, swinging, grabbing, wine-red and deep blue, vibrant yokes, turning like cogs in the machine of the evening. The arms reach out, grab me, pull my gaze, twist and turn my vision.
Around midnight I become lost in their vortex, like sweet Charybdis.
Smudges of clouds crawl by, pushed by the warm breeze, en route to nowhere. Nebula fills the voids of it all, a scarlet and purple.
An orchestra of night voices is deafening: crickets, cicadas, toads, the wind on the trees, leaves rustling, the highway not far away, the bass from her stereo inside. Off in the distance I hear sirens.
I slowly get cozy, still not used to the height, the magnitude of the circus above sending me further into vertigo.
She got up here easily with one hand, holding a full drink in the other, hardly bent over, while I crawled and hugged the roofing. Danger was intoxicating for her. I could see it in her eyes, her swagger. This was sexy. A little more terrifying for me.
"You want a sip?" She asks.
"I'm fine." I try and mask the worry from my voice.
And that's how it starts. She's sitting there, on an apartment roof, of all places, genuinely smiling at me, her dark eyes gorgeous, pulling me in, competing with the giant arms of the galaxies, sending me spinning, her body shimmering in the moonlit sky, glowing, lighting me on fire.
She stares at me. I think I'm grinning, or smiling too much, and I look away.
And we just look up at the world from below. Eyes adjust and readjust to the dimness of the infinite portrait.
We don't talk.
Slowly my grip loosens and I get comfortable.
She leans in and kisses me on my cheek and I kiss her back.
"Are you sure you don't want a drink?" It was rhetorical and she gulps, long and hard, her eyes glazing as the alcohol takes hold.
"I don't need it."
"Finally sobered up?"
"Had to happen sometime."
"Easy to get drunk off this, though." Her hand brushes the sky and with it makes a wave through the stars, their glistening sparkle splashing together in the pool of bubbling night, a twinkling wake of dust behind her fingers. And maybe the stars fall or the moon smiles or the galaxies finally manage to snatch me up. The planets align. The world stops spinning. I'm sober and feel alive, though as punch drunk as my soul can be.
"Too bad the night has to end."
"Too bad it's just a matter of time." I agree.