Tethers

Thirst running into the street. Untethered, we are the length of this spelled backwards. The trees and their small tango turn toward the light melting out across the mountains. Small things live in the gaps. Small enough to fall into our open mouths while we sleep. The day is full of gasps and the absence of breath. Agog, we run our hands over these, smoothing creases on a bedsheet.

Seawall

The walk is long, the seawall waltzing with the sea, our friends stopping, falling away, thinner ones showing up, the sunset glaring through their paper faces.

The water is high tonight even though someone is eating the moon. The sea throws things up on the wall, part of a small but pressing plan. We walk this line between the musk salt spray and the exhausted black berries all ready to give up, careening, sultry, thick and lewd with breath.

There’s a point up ahead in the darkening and further walks to walk, but maybe we’ll just sit here a while watching the strangers and their strange walks walking by.

Movements

Mungy, the air writhes, wrings out this sudden rain. I wander. Down at the bay, the beach is bare, sullen flat in the storm. The dock lists sideways, the tide awry. Somewhere, inexplicably, the small of chocolate melting or something on the edge of burning. And then it's gone.

Out on the bay, continents of clouds lurch, stumble, touch tips to the wide seething water -- just a moment between these beasts of sway and waltz.

Further down the beach a man walks away.

Tall drink of Water

The air tightens, sheets wrapped around ankles, the macramé thick cords of gravity, breath and his grey eyes.

In the restaurant we sit next to the naked glass, looking out to see the rain start to fall. Through the open door of the restaurant, the breathless air thickens with rank dust and wet. Exhales.

We finish dinner, leave, stand on the corner waiting for the light to change, listening to the hiss of the traffic. The rain still feels sudden, tropical in the heat, slaking, wiping our foreheads clean. We’ve been nothing but dust all these tired days. Be done with us.

The rain wants him, longs like thirst, willing to become just water if that’s what it takes. He is ropey, long, and pronounced. Rain falls to water, falls, then streams across marble. To want and have and fall away with the velocity of a blink.

He looks at me until I see him looking, and then he looks up, the word rivulet trickling down his shaved head, headed for the nape of his neck. The traffic lights lick the air effervescent and lime crushed.

The light changes. Later I won’t be able to remember his mouth. Just the rain.

Appendages

They are identical twins, waiting for their espresso in the café, looking at each other without seeing. They’ve seen it all before and will see it all again.

The one’s shoulder blades jut at his cotton t-shirt. He’s growing wings, much to the other’s chagrin. It’s taking more time than he expected.

The other’s been working on a tail and it’s going better than he’d hoped. Most tails, he’s learned, are half suggestion. He isn’t sure where this will lead.

Departures

In airports, in among the lines and laws, all our goodbyes and hellos come falling down the luggage carousel for all to see.

You never liked to say goodbye in airports. Didn’t like to be so private around others. As though, they could possess us in that moment, such a small thing between us. Something the absent minded might leave in seat pockets or overhead compartments.

This is the crossroads, you see, where I might become anything, a barista in Tokyo, a go go dancer in Toronto, a ragged wall of seaweed in Tofino. The wide concourse fills up with all of me while you watch the planes land. This is my goodbye.