When I close my eyes, I remember the way that you walk. I can see the way you hold your joints. Your shoulders slightly rolled forward, a gentle fore-foot padded step that causes your hips to rock and sway, your right elbow held at your ribs… arm at 110ยบ allowing your wrist to lose control of your hand. Fingers wagging as you stalk beautifully around the room. I remember the way you eat, grazing, picking, tasting, regard, wishing, smiling, frowning. The bare skin on your hips glowing like a backlit church window – the appearance of grace and the keeper of dark secrets.
I remember the way you smell, taste, sound. I hear you through distant clouds as I fall back to earth each morning… reluctantly leaving my dreams. I’ll make the inverted swan-dive through the cerebral chrysalis and become a man once again, rice paper butterfly wings crumbling beneath the weight of reality.
Plowing my face into a pillow, strangling myself with a familiar shirt, gripping at nothing in particular… I find myself all at once alone and wishing to be surrounded by you again. Unknowing how I can return. Unsure of which reality to choose, fearing that I am illusion chasing illusion; ultimately fearing that I don’t care either way. I tumble down this chasm of memory, letting your scent and taste paint their tangible shapes on my fingertips and thighs. The textures I remember so well, the sensations I find in passing blossoms. Fallen maple leaves, horse-chestnut flowers, stargazer lilies, vanilla beans, mystery soaps and creams, the sweatband of my own hat, roses… roses…. roses… jasmine – always jasmine.
I feel you on my hands. Yellow, pink, teardrop shaped and proud. These are the flavours I will never forget… because when they enter my sphere, I clearly remember the way that you walk. Cloud-swept movements, deliberate-stepped tracks, inward tip-toed, hopeful and… somehow… always slightly out of my reach.