day three: when you were mine

i can’t get that kiss out of my head. it stings like a re-opened wound, when the bandage is ripped off prematurely before any healing is complete. i feel restless, unhinged. sam left hours ago, after she dismissed my feelings of guilt, giving you back to me in a way. now the guilt is replaced with this unfamiliar and overwhelming need. i need reactions and answers, some kind of understanding. and, this feeling again. again. again.

i try to busy myself with the comfort of order, and re-organization. these things i cling to when i lack control. when my reality spins and spins into some kind of carousal abandon, and my arms want to reach for the sky, for escape; when all i want to do is scream into the water, that's when i change my room around. i move my bed under opposite windows, to the other side of the room. i re-alphabetize my albums, stopping to read the back of each one, scanning the song lists. i start to play songs that can emote for me. the music feeling like a welcome itch on exposed skin.

maybe i'll make a mixed-tape.

the songs come easily. robert and i have always had such synchronicity between us, especially musically. there are so many things to say, to think, to feel. all that fear still so strong and thriving inside of me. time has passed between now, and the last time i allowed myself to recognize love for him. the things that have come in to fill the gaps? forgettable. they just are that. not even worth the trouble of lipstick. but him. but robert.

how do i swim myself out of this? or, into this?

i keep pushing play. pause, record, play; pause, record, play. the cyclical rhythm is soothing, hypnotic, distracting. my eyes are trying to avoid the shape of things, my ears trying to focus on something besides the sound of the phone not ringing. i just want to dive deep into my waves of denial, disavow that it even happened. maybe it was all just a dream. perhaps this is not what i want at all.

the tape stops suddenly. i hate when the last song is cut off, abruptly, mid-lyric.

"oh, i love you. god, i love you. i'd kill a dragon for you. i'll die."

i could fix it. spend the time to get caught up in the numbers, the re-ordering of songs. add them up, fit them in properly, make the songs finish with perfection. but nothing ends that neatly and i cannot sit here any longer. i can't abide the stillness, the unknown. i need to know what this is.

i grab my keys. i don't even stop to look in the mirror. i don't bother with my hair, my face. i hear my brother arguing in another room, with our mother. i stop briefly when the screen door slams behind me. there is always a part of my brother that i want to scoop up and take with me, wherever it is i'm going. and, another part of me that wants him as far away from who i am, as possible. there has to be a different path for him to take.

i drive with my arms locked; straight and unwavering, no bends or curves. i used to drive like this when i had too much speed in my system. right now my heart is racing in that same way. i need a cigarette. i need something bigger, something more; something that fish hooks into me, through the skin. i need him to be home.

it has been years since i’ve been inside his house. his parent’s house. we all still live at home; well, maybe not live. i don’t think any of us have lived anywhere for a long time. just short sleeps and clothes to pick-up, that is what our “homes” have become. a place to collapse, and then get back up; a place to rejuvinate, and then back out the door as fast as you can type of living. my car was more of a home.

i had been here briefly, to robert's house, in the time since i used to sleep here. but just a stop in the drive-way. i hadn't even turned off the engine. just swing open the door, sam pushing the seat forward. "climb on in back."

but, here i am walking to his door, counting the steps. one. two. three four five. the night feels like rain, thick air that you can almost see. the damp sprinkles catch in my hair, and attach to my eyelids. i blink them away, wipe my hair from my face. i wish I’d tied it up. the doorbell is still broken. it still hangs by two tiny wires, dangling and dirty. i knock, a little too quietly, holding my breath. i am poised to run.

i see his eyes first. the house is dark behind him. then the rest of him comes into view. the porch light changing my focus. his hair is a mess, flannel pajama bottoms, a washed out black t-shirt that you can tell is soft to touch, worn in. he wipes his eyes with the palms of his hands, like a child. rub. rub. rub. his face is changing into a mottle of warm red and cold pale. he smiles, and opens his arms. he pulls me in so close that i can smell everything he is right at that moment. him. the cigarette he smoked before falling into sleep, that incense that he always swore aids in lucid dreaming, residue lingering of studio one hairspray, the scent of his body. i feel the slight tinge of sweat beading on the back of his neck, at the hairline, when i reach up to accept his welcoming embrace.

we say nothing at first. he just takes my hand and leads me inside. we walk by his parents. they are watching something on t.v. that i can’t quite make out. the couch faces the screen, not us. they don’t even see is walk by. not that it ever mattered who came and went. robert was invisible to them. his mother busied by her new children. her husband, robert’s stepfather, not wanting to embrace a son he didn’t understand. robert claimed to like it that way, though. the anonymous shadow self he became in the house, even when he was a child.

his room, it hasn’t changed much. still the piles of clothes strewn around. the black and white photographs and ripped pages of magazines pinned haphazardly to the walls. his bed, the rumpled sheets and that feathered bedspread that felt like a womb, or the embrace of a mother’s love. he wraps his arms around me again, pulling me close, sgain. he buries his face in my hair.

“you’re here.” he whispers, and we just stand there, together, locked in this moment of time and space and past and future and words and music and emotion. i can feel nothing but his arms, his breath, his body. all thinking is gone.

finally one of us has to speak, had to step back, has to let go first. i pull back from him slowly, unlocking my arms, my hands sliding down his. i grab his hands and hold them in mine. i look up at him. focus, janie. try to focus. i should ask what now. i should ask how he feels. i should ask what he wants this to be. but, i can’t. i just can’t make it that real. instead i reach into the pocket of my grandmother’s old sweater that i grabbed off the floor of my backseat on the way here. i pull out the tape I made.

“i brought music.” i murmur, handing it to him, smiling crookedly, suddenly feeling so shy. my whole body is shaking.

he puts it in his tape player, pushes play. the silver boom box type thing that lies on the floor by the bed. he sits down on the edge and stares at me, his eyes wide, and mesmorizing. i catch a haze of blue and grey floating around him, in the air; a trick of my imagination, i’m sure.

“come sleep with me, my music girl.” his voice is shaking, like my insides. hearing it startles me, sends these running up and down and through me chills over every inch of my skin. this vulnerability is new, strange, yet beautiful. i can barely breathe at all anymore. i'm afraid of cracking the lens, breaking this moment in shards. i walk over to him, dizzy. now my whole body is shivering.

there is so much not said that washes over us through the music from that tape. fumbling hands, both of ours. i pull off his t-shirt. he unbuttons my sweater. i pull my shirt off, over my head. he reaches his arms around me, fumbling more, as he tries to unlatch my bra; the trip up of unskilled boy hands. i finally take over, remove it, throw it past his shoulders. it lands in a heap on the floor, follwed by more clothes, adding to the piles. we are just us now, naked and pale, shadows casting shapes on skin; the street lights making lines and language across us. we are playing games with night, within our wordless disbelief.

this isn’t a first for either of us, just a first between us. we aren't stumbling in that how do you do this and that sort of way. but, still, it is new. this is new. our fingers explore parts of each other that we have never seen. it feels as if we are translating a strange and alien text to each other. communicating through touch, senses, lips and shoulders and spine curves. the feel of him sliding inside of me is beyond words, it garners deep throated gasps from both of us. we are frozen for a moment, not moving, just grasping at this feeling of shared existence. we are full of wonder at how there is no longer a dividing point between where one of us breathes in, and the other breathes out.
our eyes lock, our Bodies move. this is what it is all supposed to feel like. this feeling, i have never let myself feel anything near this.

“i love you.” his shaky whisper voice is back, while he moves within me. his words moving within me, too. then the shock of release, a slight panic enters in, not wanting to stop. we hold each other still. all our missing pieces are melding together. my legs lock around him, holding him to me. his hands are in my hair, tangling the strands, interlocking us more.

“don’t move. please, don’t move.” i whisper back.

i feel the tears coming. i let them go, not bothering to stop them. i allow them to trickle down my face.

“i love you, janie. always.” he says, clearer now, as he traces the marks of my tears with his lips.

i’m shaking again, from deep inside, and all the way out. this is a soul shake. my skin is hot and cold and tingle singed color alive. my lips reach up to meet his. i grab hold of his bottom lip with my teeth. he is grabbing my hair now, his teeth baring down on my neck, i can picture the pink flush rising. all of the waiting and hesitation, the mixed signals and miscalculations, the holding back. it is all being unleashed now. the passion grabbing us again, and thrashing us about. over our bodies a safety net invisibly wraps around us, protecting us, giving permission for us devour each other. we never knew how hungry we really were.

and then collapse. the sweetest of sleep creeping in and taking over, pulling us deep beneath an ocean of dreams and sated feelings; of love. all that human doubt and consequence is locked out for the night. our night. the beauty of the way our bodies blend, and the way we could always sleep like this.