Foolish

“In a painted sea, what to write?
A letter taking tomorrow back?” ~ D. Bonta

When the tide was low, I walked and loved the water and the sugary sand. When it was high, I stayed my careful distance and fingered threads, turned pages, steeped tea, listened to the murmur of voices in public rooms. They came and went, as if there were no tomorrow. I loved the varied colors of their customs, their buttonholes and hatbands, the air suffused with smells of tobacco leaf or oranges or lavender; I loved their dark heels of stacked wood, their calves wrapped in supple leather. Wind sped through the trees, which shed their leaves then budded as the season turned. Once, flying in as evening broke and the cities below filled out their grids with light, I watched as a couple kissed and kissed in their airplane seats. They sank into each other as if the air was tasteless, as if the sky was lackluster, as if their need for delirium was the color of the sun as it seized then disappeared at the rim of the sea. I wish you were foolish with me like that, I wish you’d come to me as if I were the last cool drink of water forever and forever in the world.

 

In response to Via Negativa: Out of Order.

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