Midnight Boats

The roses were sleeping, their red petals snoring beneath midnight winds.

The winds rose from the sand that chafed at our bodies.

Our bodies were two boats drifting away from each other across rivers that foamed like untamed mares in the wind.

I wish I were a mare, my black mane fanning out behind me as I run through the grass, allowing the blades to caress my bare toes.

I try not to trample the snoring roses, as the midnight winds bear me farther and farther from the river where I once paddled the raft of your body.

The raft was too light for two people, but who knows if it could have borne the weight of two horses, or a horse and a man, or a man and woman who sometimes feels like a horse?

Fragments

"Fragments", she said, "It was all fragments." We were lying on her couch sipping red wine, and I could smell the alcohol on her, see the red smudges like lipstick stains in the corners of her mouth. "I thought it would mean something, I thought -". And she was crying. I wanted to stroke her chin, but my hands felt glued to the glass. "Sh!", I said, "He's an idiot." "No, no, he's not." she said. I nodded. We drank in silence for a while, until it got late and I had to go home. I kissed her cheek on the way out, leaving a trace of wine on her skin.

I didn't get to Jake's until nearly eleven. I was a little bit tipsy by then, I think, and I can't remember who started the kiss, and it seemed that I couldn't tell where my body began and his body ended, and we were on the hardwood floor, and it didn't matter. Our clothes were strewn around us, oceans of flannel and silk whose waves sometimes jutted into his mouth, my ear, his thighs.

Afterwards, neither one of us spoke for a while. He was stroking my arms. I wanted to ask him to spill the fragments he had told her like fine wine, to whisper that it didn't matter that two hours ago she had been sitting on his couch, that three months ago she had been lying here, like this maybe, her feet on top of a crumpled plaid shirt, his hands working their way down her rib-cage as the wooden floor began to hurt her sides. I wondered why I hadn't asked him that night at the bar, when he offered to buy me a glass of white wine. "Don't cry", he said, "Don't cry". In my sleep, I dreamt I was crying, and Jake was kissing my tears, and murmuring gibberish about the power of healing.

When I woke up the next morning, I was still lying on the floor, but Jake had covered with me with a blanket, and left for work. His note told me there was coffee for me, his love, in the kitchen. So I drank.

She called me at work. "I'm sorry about last night. I was kind of - I don't know, kind of -" I interrupted her. "No need to apologize. I'm your friend. I'm here for you." There was a moment of silence, and I could envision her nodding on the other line. "Thanks." she said, "Thanks. That means a lot." "I have to go now", I said, "I have a big assignment." "Sure, I understand." she said, and we agreed to meet for lunch sometime next week. After I hung up, I looked down at my desk: A laptop beside dozens of stickies, pencils that needed sharpening, pens that had run out of ink, random photographs: of me and my parents, of me and Jake, of me and my friends. I thought of her sitting there last night, saying, "Fragments, just fragments", and how her legs matched the color of Jake's thighs.

But I no longer believe in the magic of colors, and sometimes even wear pink and red to work on dress-down Fridays. Jake thinks that red is my best color. He thought that her best color was blue, because she has blue eyes - the color of water, she said he said, as the Cabernet ran dry. I am working on a report on water, while pondering his lip upon her lip, his thigh upon her thigh.

His lips were playing her legs, tucked under her body like sleeping gazelles, surrounded by the foliage of her blue tulle skirt, that matched the pools of her eyes. "I think I lost my dance.", she said. "You'll get it back", he replied, the rythm of his lips percussing against her thighs. "You're just saying that so you can get laid", she said, pulling away her legs and gathering the leaves of her skirt around her knees. "I love you, and I want to make love to you. Is that so terrible?" he asked, bending towards his favorite spot behind her ear. She sighed. "You're either the corniest or the most romantic person I ever met."

She allowed him to play her like a violin; wooden and hollow inside, she lay still beneath his trembling fingers, silent in the serenading caresses of their moonlight sonata.

The next day, she danced perfectly - not a step out of place. Her dressing room was festooned with flowers. She returned home quickly, to put the flowers in water before they died. The dark blue couch echoed the colors of the sky, and the moon peaked through an open sliver of window. Once the flowers were asleep in their vases, the silent violin lay down on the couch and cried.