Friday, April 3, 2009

Substitute Boyfriend

Up late with photos spread over the kitchen table, his face glows up from 8x10 glossies, a last kiss drying on lips grinning after secrets, and guitar fingers hummingbird her ears, nape, hair, whispering flickers of song in the soft light.

Earlier, when he walked her back, the air sparked, darkening streets restless with new leaves, old oaks, driveway gravel, the harbor blinked and bled into their hands. She remembered that long-ago August, New York in heat-whispered streets, walking home after the SoHo wedding, taxis slished past in a light rain at the end of a day begun in low strumming before rising.

She told him how those ghostly zings his fingers made as he clutched from chord to chord reminded her, took her breath away. Left her hanging on his lizardy licks at the blue time of night, the way they sauntered north with arms linked through lights that never turned off. A movement of arm against arm, his hands in her pockets before they went in. Then all night on the floor of his loft in slats of street light, they laughed until thirst drove them mad. Then kissed for the sake of kissing.

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