The Beginning of a Long Distance (Incomplete Musings)

I walked into that corridor counting the hairs on his head. “Four-thousand-seventy-seven, Four-thousand-seventy-eight, Four-thousand-seventy-nine—Where is he?—Who am I now?—What could this be if—if?—if?—if?” The airport waiting lounge, with its baggage claim conveyers—slithering slowly then stopping, ruckus-ing, then releasing, returning what a life was to its pretender—appearing behind electronic banners for airlines and dotting off in either direction, boasted a height capable of containing an entire airplane standing on its tippy toes, nose to the ceiling. That chivalrous space, cascading panes—blue sky swarming at their backsides—like great puddles, gave way to a breakage in the eternity of separation by objects, bore a sanctuary to mimic the seemingly too grand and limitless core of a human existing while collapsing into a particle of dust that awakened in my deepest heart. And it began to itch.

There were men everywhere. Clusters of soon to be grandfathers in undone collars and worn, gold bands away on business leading their unwise, proud chest-ed, toothy rumble of tanned, still thick haired incarnations sporting fashionable pink ties, concealing beer breath and condom lined wallets that would be torn open and wedged quickly inside a girl who would mistake a one night stand for a marriage proposal, grunged ramblers with the militant pursuit of mission directed towards their not ceasing, not attaching longer than to learn a girl’s name and departing the moment it seems possible to guess at its meaning [an action such as this might cause the yin to turn back on the yang (And what if there was no yin to counter? Or not enough? Or not what the yin would have you believe its consistency really felt like? Or not what the yin itself would have decided was so yin about it?), and one kind-eyed, dark skinned dreamer full of filthy romanticism, pushing a mop on wheels, and mindlessly humming a tune.

I protested the natural inclination to look in their eyes. Somehow I knew I couldn’t bear or casually process any extraneous human contact, even in the form of a pupil kiss divided by thirty feet and sealed with total anonymity. It occurred to me on an unconscious level that such an arbitrary connection might cause my kettle to steam and I’d go rushing out of the airport, denying my visitor the opportunity to witness my timeliness and respectful anticipation for his arrival. From the moment I gently rested my bum and back against the soft faux grey leather of the socialist seat wedded to a row of four beside and five behind that faced the other direction, the itch cropped up, like a caterpillar existing at the bottom of a great dark cavern by the pure spontaneity of someone having imagined it being there. I couldn’t at first put my finger on the itch, not only because it had been so long since I’d felt something like it, but because I had not summoned it, or even summoned summoning it, and yet, there it was, bug eyed, many legged, and irritatingly real. And only because, for me, it suddenly was.

He dropped into sight like a boy I dreamt about from a magazine; someone quick, accidentally handsome enough, purposeful, and un-purposefully odd. I bulked at the possibility that this character rambling curiously below airline markers made unidentifiable by the distance between the pilot and a flight attendant fastened in for landing at the back of the plane was my guest. My tickled itching heart sprouted vine-ish tentacles, sent searching with such carnal, timeless marrow so true as to feel charmed by the bright air of the afternoon, by the calendar date in June, by the ray of sun and chemical reaction that sends a bud splitting open into a radiant splash of life. I clasped my phone and continued a call with a friend about borrowing his bicycle perhaps for my guest while the boy tore off from the luggage advertisement and charged into my better view until he was standing over me swarmed by my willful vines. I cased my lungs in tin foil, impromptu perfected a coy expression for cover, and merged into solidarity with the grey socialist seat, desperately floundering, rooting through my stored supplies of emergency rationale to de-claw the lover in me and forbid me from treating my guest a human scratching post laced with catnip.

His dark eyes sparkled like the surface of a lake at night—one that’s pulled the luminescent moon to many small pieces, relishing each bit of perfection—and lured me through the trees to gaze upon his hidden, un-named shape trapped on an unknown stretch far from the gas stations, banks, and sandwich shops. This bird that had once fallen, as an egg—as had I—from the very nest upon our symmetrical shelled release into this forest, drew out his wings, and I resounded in feather-same fashion to give and bear the span and character of my tool-ish toys. I was naked woman dismissing the safe guard and garb of the spindly woodlands her rounded form offset, cooling herself, diving into the embrace of a black pool hairy with shards of heaven. I was an adult animal (or perhaps a toddler capturing for the first time her own reflection) glancing the form of its species armored with cock rather than clitoris, with corner rather than curve. I surfaced and withdrew from the safe manufactured seats and dove my arms about his neck, my breasts puffing and gathering warmth into his chest, my hands clasping his shoulder blades, as my chin led soaring lips into his swooping mouth. And in this embrace a dance began, one long ago choreographed by distant, un-named lights.

Whatever goodness had been trapped in me by the accident of my own existence, time, and the dice roll of good breeding fled into his warm, vaporous mouth—that still tasted of milk as it had years ago, cupped around several loose particles of sweet curiosity and swam back into my breath, flooding my taste buds with a familiar reminder. A door you always forget to shut completely, that looks closed, but isn’t ever. His hands were searching my back and hips and arms and shoulders for a place to land or checking for the heart beat which can be found at any inch of the body or continuing on in effort to resist the squeezing of flesh without permission. We hadn’t meant to say the words that had always been obvious and therefore easy to say, and because of this lacking in drama we were inclined to remind ourselves and one another over and over again a thousand times a day in case the other hadn’t heard since we chose to speak these highly confidential words in a whisper. I love you. I love you too. Oh I love you too. I love you too darling. So forth and onwards forever and for always. Perhaps only birds of a feather know each other are dying for the reassurance one desires and how to affirm for another one's devotion.