Maybe...

A voice in the background, the sort that creeps through wooden walls, vibrating atoms caressing air, skin, bones, nerves. Electric current running across the synaptic highway, chemicals tearing into information, deciphering, decoding, arranging according to perceived intent or filtering by experience. A laugh, something familiar, soft footsteps getting closer, energy filling the room and your hand on my shoulder, first one then the other, looking forward, then twisting to meet your gaze. You asked when I’d be finished; I’m always finished when you draw near.

I learned some time ago that little matters in the presence of something that does, something or someone that drowns out the flutter of life, there aren’t many somethings and even fewer someones, so few you can count them backwards and forwards and never move past one. Whatever it was will wait I whispered, finished is only a matter of time.

So you told me about the future, walking through the garden with wind blowing through your hair, I mentioned the past, five years from now, and today as though they were a single event. My fingers traced the lines of your hand, dancing across your life line, landing on your wrist. “Lips have lines too!”, you said, “and days and nights and mornings and…” I responded with a nod, looking up, the light from the doorway cascading about your hair like the sun eclipsed. I stood, reached about your frame, pulled you in and ran my fingers across your mouth, felt the days, the nights, the mornings come flooding back, the warmth of someone that matters, in the future, in the garden, in the past, and today. I wondered at desire, a brief lapse in feeling before reason slipped away, succumbing to nature, to the woman that commanded my kiss.

Maybe the feeling of smoke in the morning or just before bed, chest hollow and wanting, needing something that can’t be explained. Maybe hot coffee moving through the body, resting in the belly, and opening the eyes. Maybe the sound of your voice, in the background, creeping through wooden walls, vibrating me, my atoms, caressing, skin, bones, and nerves. Maybe all three in the past or tomorrow or today, “Maybe”, you said in the distance, in the background as you came near, “Maybe…”