In the Space Between
It was a hot day even with the windows down.
His legs stuck to the vinyl seat
as he snapped his jazz fingers
to the heartbeat of the radio.
She sat with her face in the wind,
still and quiet.
They slid down the street
in his rusted heirloom of a Camaro.
It was second-hand transportation
but they wore it like movie stars.
It was a slick day.
The kind that slides its belly along the streets.
The sun was humming,
loudly and fluorescently like a ceiling light.
It was a hot day.
He licked his dry, cracked lips as she watched jealously
from the passenger seat, behind dark sunglasses.
The heat simmered on top of the asphalt.
It collected in the space between them. Humming.
The day was swallowing her.
His lips. The heat. His jawbone. His arms.
The heat. Single bead of sweat slipping down
the back of her calf. Distance between them.
Heat. Equation. Distance. Lips. Heat.
The day was swallowing her whole.
And he just kept humming as he drove,
legs still sticking to the vinyl seat.
Slivered souls - each half of the whole;
Cosmic sky tessellating
Above the desert dust glittering -
Wave after wave.
Star Power
Slender as small bones, the shard of light -
one pinprick in an otherwise black night sky.
And she knew, falling or not, tonight was a night for a wish...
one slight plea to hold back the oblivion
of a world that was eternally spinning.
Fingers slid over dry lips,
a nervous habit of an otherwise calm-seeming girl.
Fingers shifted to ear lobes, massaging,
as eyes locked intensely
on the sliver of cosmic heaven.
A million wants and needs rolled to the front of her thoughts,
a typhoon in a silent and sulking evening.
She ignored the storm.
She already had the one thought she needed,
had it anchored fast behind her upwardly focused eyes.
And with one breath...
Out -
She let it fly.