Back From The Road
The sky grows dim out the window as I watch, timidly, as the light disappears in clusters. It stays longer than it used to, deciding to linger in the doorframe just a while longer, and now the waning of the light comes on slowly. I see the moment where the house tops kiss the last beam goodnight. Winter shadows this farewell, and I blink once— dark again. This steady farewell that was concealed from me for months is back, and I begin to slow down; staring for a moment longer than I have been able to. It’s nice.
I’ve got tan lines and peeling shoulders from sunny time away. I won’t tell you much, for fear I might spoil the magician’s secrets to a magical weekend, but I will paint some pictures of my time down under (not Australia, sorry, but down under the point where I am— south of the south).
]March brings the blue bonnets to Texas, and it feels like blowing soap bubbles at my 8-year-old birthday party. Pretty sweet, gotta tell ya!
Vignette 1:
His elbow is notched, hanging over the bubbling hot tub, immersed in coughed snot and spilled rum and loose hair and yelled secrets. Veiled in sepia, the sunglasses gingerly hang off his nose which is freckled and sun strewn. The light is dim, going under the waves behind the palm fronds. Crinkled eyebrows stain his face, under which his chin nods at the remarks by a red haired beauty across the pool. There is a smile forming on petunia lips, so subtle that I can see it only because I am next to him and staring, unwavering, at every gyrating muscle. The left lip curves up, stopped by an air of pensiveness (which is funny because there is nothing pensive about him in this hot tub at closing time), and then quickly returns to its normal spot under his nose. Salty hair softened by strawberry curls, blue eyes bleeding sun streaks in a saffron cylinder.
Vignette 2:
Routine on island time: hands around a waist, pulling gently in. Pillows too tall for hardened heads, sheets strewn from humid winds. Watery coffee pods on the 6th floor, smelling of muddy rain boots. A hat, passed between two on shifts of light pollution. Glasses with sweaty lipstick left at the molasses bar, wind sweeping in sandy secrets. Eyes searching for the other, catching glances across blue beach chairs and hooded cerulean umbrellas. Fluttering book pages rocked by the musky sea breeze. Mountains of clouds on the horizon, waves lapping the sand pipers in a game of tag.
Vignette 3:
How I knew you were it (not for the first time, but for this time): when I watched from afar, memorizing your concerned and friendly features. Hot and drunk (probably) and full of love for you. The blue seats, reclined slightly, with fidgeting legs trying to make a bed out of cardboard and steel; uncomfortable, but reaching for my fingers anyways. Building the Spanish castle, only to stop and spill sea water on the striped towel to ask about the cawing of the birds or the page turned or the taco half eaten on my hip. Got full. Little League of wrinkled seen-it-all-or-just-enough older folks and wondering if my hips will work well enough to join the team with you one day. Inside jokes told from younger years, lives lived before I was around. Familiar stares, knowing looks. The sag of heavy shoulders, full of responsibility and hardship and good work— letting the lull of suburbia take a hold (even for a second). Hands. Hands. Hands. It was always about the hands.
Vignette 4:
There is never a moment I love more than watching a family try to take one photo together. Truly the most tender thing I can witness. So full of love, yet so full of anger and restraint. Funny Hawaiian shirts and scowled faces— feigning, briefly, that each would rather be anywhere else than in the sand where their toes sink in. They know, as I know, that the disguise is not fooling anyone. Not even the couple who took photos (over and over again) for them, until everyone’s eyes were open.