Tuesday, June 10, 2008

no matter what I do

Summer, like Recession, settled in before we claimed it and before we expected June's sticky slop-for-air. The pristine mornings already are robbed of fresh infancy by humid fog and blinding brightness.

Creek banks are rotting in the sweet stink of rained berries that I've never noticed in all of three years. How they have hidden for so long is my newest quandary. They bleed between my sandaled toes, turning the pink skin deep purple and refusing to wash away. The grass is littered with them, unavoidable in my a.m. and p.m. promenades. I have quickly grown to hate them and the fruit flies they summon in herds. At night, there is a fortunate breeze that will linger only for a while, until the wavy, squiggled mirages of August's Hell settle. Limbs thick with fringe rustle in air not yet still, above the flaming, flickering bulbs of fireflies.

I've walked among these reoccurring scenes for weeks now as my beginnings and ends have become marked with the reliable biology of my dog's need to empty. Only this night I noticed the trees and the hum of early June and the sad, lonely seduction of myself. The warm change of season brings me here where without reason, I withdraw. Every year, slightly askew from the last in its nature, leading me not quite into the depths of Darkness, but to walk on the hems of her skirts. I could bore us both with years of analysis, but I won't. Instead, I'll only say that it comes uninvited with a restless itch.

I've staved off the temptation to succumb, thus far, with a distracted dialog, an open conversation that I imagine to have with him. I comment on the day's doldrums and anticipate the way he would laugh or tease me. I relive and re-relive the archived moments stowed away and rationed in times like this, so the hours keep steady, not losing any momentum. There is something to look toward in them passing as my life might seem to have otherwise settled in 9-to-5, flat monotony.

On the patio of that coffee bar where earlier I sat to scribble empty lines, deep, throaty Blues wafted from speakers over-head. Maybe it's the heavy heat, the weeks having denied us the luxury of communication, rotting-fruit-stench, or a glitch in my psyche that has caused my low spirit. No matter the root, I am lonesome tonight. I am the aching pluck of guitar strings and the brooding ballads birthed in The Delta.

1 comment:

Rachel Joiner said...

Wonderful writing - just wanted to stop by and say that.