I Woke In The Still Dark Morning

I woke in the still dark morning, far too early to unwind myself from the sheets and blankets holding me to my bed. The air outside is cool and faintly damp. It spills through the open window. I shift my head on the pillow, stir the remnants of a dream. I breathe the still present scent of you, mingled with the sheets, spread over my skin. I taste you in my mouth; the soft pressure of your lips still lingering on mine. 

I drift again to sleep.

When I wake, the cool air from the window is replaced by shafts of light. And in the soft rays of morning, fragments of my dreams shimmer and float like dust. I am still wrapped in the disorder of my sheets. I still feel your flesh pressed hard against mine. Everything is luminous, everything glows.

I am a different man than I was two days ago—before you. 

I lie in my bed, half terrified by the newness of the world. Everything around me increases its frequency. Even the walls vibrate with the memory of trying to contain you. I expect that all has changed, that everything will be bathed in the residue of your presence, transformed like I am; transformed by your beauty, your mind, your touch.

I knew I was undone when I looked into your eyes, just moments into knowing you. 

I knew I was falling when my lips touched yours. 

I unravel from my blankets, wash my face, brush my teeth. I pull on my jeans and slip on my shoes. 

I step into the world knowing you are in it. 

What further proof of miracles could I ever need?

*** 

I often think about miracles. Early in my life, my teachers told me that everything around us is divine. When I was older, I was instructed that the belief in unknowable things was the result of a weak mind, out of sync with the rational world. I listened to both these positions with bewildered ambivalence. The proponents of each of these points of view seemed outlandishly certain, and I was so far from certain about anything. I certainly couldn’t decide which of these two visions of the world I would take as my own, so I took neither. 

Children think that unknowable things are only unknown because one is too dumb or stubborn to see them, but I am beginning to know again the things I have forgotten.

I have stacks of books I have never read, but the thought that one day I might, keeps me rooted in both the rational quest for knowledge and the faith that even in the possibility that I never open to a single page in any of them, that there is still something to compel me beyond myself. I think that is a pretty good summation of our relationship to that which may or may not be the thing that might be in a position to toss a miracle our way now and again. 

There is a word for my affliction, though I cannot recall it at the moment. It means to acquire books while letting them pile up without being read. I believe my pile has magical powers, so I hesitate to disturb the fermentation of those powers as I wait for their magic to be released upon me.

I speak as if I am apologizing for speaking. I speak as if I don’t wish to be heard. I realize, mid-sentence, that what I am saying has no business being said, and as I lose myself in this realization, the sentence I am speaking breaks loose and gorges itself on even more meaningless and pointless words; belching, eventually, a long overdue period or trailing off as it passes out from irrelevance or exhaustion. It is mostly that I let my thoughts get a glimpse of words, I always forget to lock that door, and the light and noises from the world trickle in and lure my thoughts to the dangerous realm of language. To be stubborn and dumb and inarticulate is annoying at worst, but if one has any dominion over words at all, it is, in that mouth, the beginning of corruption and power.  

But now, as I step into the world, it all seems different. My mouth fills with the beginnings of sounds and syllables that feel pure in their inception. They poke the insides of my cheeks, yet glide over my tongue softly. They are forming and fermenting; like the magic pulsing in the books lining my living room walls. 

***

Do you know what I ache to tell you?

Do you know what I ache to let loose on the world?

***

I chew on my words, they stick to my molars like caramels. I look in the mirror for bits in my teeth. 

***

You warm my hand on your soft belly. It is a gesture that I cherish. It is a gesture that makes me feel loved. I close my eyes and you roll your body onto mine. 

***

In my mouth, a world grows. I fear it wishes to replace the one I currently live in. How could I possibly contain such a thing? 

But when you kiss me, you breathe a dream into my mouth, and the words that live there make a bed of my tongue and huddle in the warm spaces at my cheeks. The world in my mouth sleeps and dreams the dreams you send. And with every kiss, the world inside me grows. With every kiss, the language that aches to be heard comes nearer to fruition and more impossible to subdue. 

***

When we are in the world.

When we are in the world I calculate the angle of my proximity to you.

I calculate the degree of our distance. 

I imagine an arc from me to you, I imagine the world in the space between us. 

When we are in the world, that arc is electric; when we are in the world, that arc is a bridge.

***

I am startled awake. Outside the world is still dark. A light from the neighbor’s patio sends soft illumination through the half-drawn drapes of your bedroom window. I readjust my head on the pillow, see that you are still sleeping. You make a small sound and instinctively turn towards me. I feel the words turning in my mouth. 

***

My days are full. I have obligations—and desires I want to satisfy. I am automatic, I am all cause and effect. I go through the motions, I am motion sick and out of sorts. I am disoriented, disengaged. My upheaval was marshaled by a kiss. I pace and dig furrows in my carpet. I walk and drag canyons in my wake.  

How do we stay engaged in the moment, how do we impose our will? The world around me is what it must be—in spite of me, indifferent to me. The world forming in my mouth will one day do the same. 

Will I birth another world after this one is released? Is this a cycle that cannot be broken? 

How much have I forgotten? How much have I let lapse? Perhaps it is the unknowable thing, the unsayable thing, that opens the lock on the door of the house of our future. 

***

Had I ever believed there could be a moment like this? Did I ever dare to have such a thought? I hear your soft breathing, mixed with the sounds of the ocean. Your body moves in synchronicity to the movement of the sea outside our window. Below us is the edge of the world, below us is the churning sea. The waves crest and trough. The waves tumble and retreat. The moon bathes the ocean in silvery light. Your body presses against me. Your body moves in rhythm to mine. With every breath, we mimic the sea below.

***

I am building a bridge to you, always I am stringing cables, sinking posts. I am an island, you are the faraway shore. You are a continent, a world, a paradise...home. I am formed by the fissures, I am formed from upheaval. And still and always, a world is forming behind my teeth. My mouth is full. There is a city building on my tongue, sinking its foundation into the cracks and crevices, into clusters of bulbous nerves. I taste the streets and alleys, savor the upward thrusting of buildings and monuments. I feel the future taking shape. 

***

When all is silent; when all I taste is the soft wonderful of your mouth, I am lost in the beautiful absence of progress. There is no building taking place, no words filling my mouth with calls for revolution. There is nothing but open space, all around us, for miles and years in all directions. Your mouth is my world, my future, my revolution. I place my hand on the curve of your breast, feel your heart beating beneath your flesh. The sun marked a border between the known and unknown; three pale triangles, precisely defined. And I have trespassed your forbidden places—as if I belonged there; as if I were coming home. 

I am a fractal being, as we all are. I am a recurring pattern, magnified to infinity. I am random and chaotic and exquisitely predictable: because every path leads me to you, and that map is encoded in every movement, every breath. 

I step into the world knowing you are in it. Before you, no longer exists, after you, never will. I carry you in me and I am carried in you. I am absorbed in the romance of the unknown, charmed by the poetry of the hidden world. 

In swarms and in waves, these thoughts of you come at me, as I cross the threshold delineating your world.

Your lips are the horizon, your mouth, the undiscovered shore. 

I fight the current, wrestle the swells. I try to keep alive this metaphor of discovery, of navigating the seas that separate us. I come from my world to unite us in yours. I construct our future upon your pillow as you sleep. 

I whisper my world into your ear. My words, and the city they have built, flow into you on my breath. 

I move across the contour of your neck, my mouth laying foundations, paving the roads I will follow back to the place this all began. And my mouth is nearly empty as your body lifts beneath my lips. 

My lips are a dam, and behind them, the rivers overflow their banks. My mouth fills with words whose only function is to breach the barrier of my fear. And what is it that I am afraid of? What is it that makes me wake in the quiet serenity of night? I watch you breathe in the soft glow of the patio light. I watch your eyes flutter behind your lids in the moment of a dream and dare to imagine you are dreaming of me. I move my hand to yours and even in your sleep, our fingers intertwine. 

And what is it I could possibly fear? 

In the dazzling terror of this moment; as I watch you sleep, I feel the sea of words in my mouth part for the only words that matter, they flow like lanterns adrift on the current. I part my lips, my tongue taps the roof of my mouth. And it is not fear I feel as these words flow into the tangle of your hair. My lips move to articulate a sound. And I whisper into the world that I love you. 

And you turn your body to face me. You growl a sound of pleasure. 

In the soft glow of the patio light, in the churning ocean of our bed, I feel your hand grip mine more tightly, and I watch your lips part as you whisper the words which your mouth also can no longer contain.