Able Standing
Her eyes responded, acute and grave, like a pendulum motionless in mid stroke. Black. Jet black. The color of her hair. I withdrew as might a lion in the battle for the pack, only for a pulse, a shift of weight to regain composure.
“Able,” she spoke softly.
‘Able’ she says often, and it places me on air. Her voice a blessing, a solemn truth, rings for days in my mind: playing, pulsing at the rhythm of her body, my body, together, one. I had lost indeed, a shadow glimpsed is a light candor, procured delicately as like dissolves like, as love dissolves mind.
She placed her hand on my left thigh. Her right cheek rose to catch the weight of her smile. I smiled. A tear formed in her left eye. She gently rocked towards me while the tear perched quivering—the sole star to escape from the galaxy—and fro.
Be sure not to wash away your beauty. I told her.
And fro.
“Come now.”
I shied away.
“Come, Able.”
I sighed.
Her hand removed from my thigh. With her weight over her knees, her eyes reached upward—waiting for me to grab hold. The tear had defeated the smile. And fro, as her hands now rested on her own thighs, eyes fixed anew on the horizon. I withdrew, as might a lion in the battle for his pack, stunned, ambiguous—decided. Blood pulsing, once again I heard my name. I leaned forward to catch the tear as he fell from her face. She faced me. The waves thundered, paced atthe opaqueness of intention.
Her gaze fixed now on a pair of pelicans nearby. Happy pelicans. The sun rose a moment earlier to grant the morning dew’s wish to fly, and, now rest near the midpoint of her eye—matted, delicate—glazed in a fluid that would dissipate far sooner than the sun would ever stand a chance to make the acquaintance. Her hands remained on her own knees as I leaned forward to catch the tear falling from her cheek.
Sometimes the world spins faster than normal. I seldom notice as my simple mind can hardly interpret the nuances in such complexity. The sun now rest on the meridian of her iris. Jet black. The universe houses such stars as well. She then trapped the sun in, allowing her warmth to rest—abstract, delighted. A victim to every curve, I traced her skin as a sunflower the sky, every moment of light observed, and not a shadow to be found.
I spoke.
As a tear snuck from her left eye, I reached forward. Her lips rose in a curve of such brightness they could have been the crescent moon whom lights the midnight sky. The tear fell through my fingers, my hand still, though my heart raced as did my glance to catch him, as he landed gracefully in the grass, a sodium lake—a sea rather—for a small passer-by. I placed the others with him as her hand once again graced my thigh. My head arose, as stands a lion’s.
