timeintotime

Sunday, January 29, 2006

timeintotime

"i'll meet you," she said. "at the bus stop, one tuesday."

"how would i know?" he asked.

"you'd know. my hair, my eyes, my lips, my skin would make the world fall tenderly around you from two blocks away."

it's been years now, and the books she sent you had long tired themselves out making love with the dust bunnies under your bed. you've called her name more than a few times since, but only ended up waking the ghost of her imagined taste in your mouth. and you curse in english and a smattering of other languages you've picked up along the way. your tavern cursing always made her laugh.

it's six in the morning. time to walk her out of your system again. maybe you'll take that book on hentai she found so gloriously entertaining. you could never get that about her. but okay, you'll take her book out for some fresh air today.

you turn your collar up against the chill of old, familiar things. there's the baptist church. the school. the diner where you could always get them big-ass breakfasts. oh, the avenue with its hint of eternal autumn. and later, further on, the bus stop.

(you're dreading it already.)

"god, but my world is small," you say. and you gently finger the spine of the book in your hand as if it were her spine you were touching.

you don't know how to let go, really. every moment is marked with this and that of her. your best friend, probably with the best of intentions, says earnestly, "go out and fuck, man. i'd fix you up with somebody. you have to let me help you." as if you were some kind of crazy with no common sense to speak of. you don't tell him how you've fucked five different women in three days. all of them drop-dead gorgeous in their respective parts of the world. all of them not her. sure, it helped quiet the demons for a while.

anyway, here's the bus stop. here's where time stands still. for you, it would always be tuesday in these parts.

(bus 21892 boarding.)

and you think, maybe it'll be different today. maybe, you wouldn't let me walk by because you thought it would go nowhere. maybe you would make the world fall tenderly around me from two blocks away. or even from one block away. okay, how about half a block? don't make me grovel, sweetheart. please, don't. i can love you so much better than this.

and damn it, somebody manages to interrupt your sad little monologue. "may i have the time?"

you say, even without looking at your watch, "it's 6:45. well, i could be off for a few minutes or so, but i'm pretty sure that's accurate."

"thanks."

you look away from the beautiful stranger and turn your face up to the sky, that lovely blue suicide poem. you think of how you would lay her down under that sky, how you would take everything of her, how you would die small deaths together. your lower belly stirs with that same old desire. but it's time to go and you've things to do.

"see you around," you say, as your mind moves on to other things. like paperwork and the electric bill and tomorrow's date with anya, or whatever name her mother gave her in slovenia.

you turn away from 6:45, the bus stop, tuesday. and the world, ironic as it is, happens right behind your back—melting into a der blaue reiter kandinksy all around you.

she gave you that book on abstract paintings, too. but then, come to think of it, she never really knew how to move you.

| o^o |69 kph |

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