On the Way Out

She looked at him like she always did during these unimportant passing moments. Just looked. Looked with an unassuming glance as she picked up and replaced mislaid magazines, open and avoided bills, overflowing ashtrays, and chewing gum wrappers; the usual discard that tightened their living space. A glance between them, overlooked or unrecognized, unknown times by each. How can on expect to catalogue all these moments? And of each moment, its subtlety, image, and importance; if there was significance shared between their eyes at all? But this was special. This time this unassuming look struck him deeply. He felt of the look ,at that moment, as it passed through him, the feeling that it was the kind of look they shared before they ever knew each other. He didn’t even move from his relaxed posture, arms across his stomach, feet propped upon the coffee table between the sofa and the chattering television. Though inwardly, he stiffened, anxious. He felt no inclination to move at all, and she moved around him as if he was a fixture of the apartment.

He didn’t move because he was accustom, or expected, her to clean. On the contrary, usually, if she began to straighten, it inspired him to aid her. With a sigh or a groan, not truly directed at her but more towards himself and his characteristic laziness, he would rise to participate. It was a respect for her he chose to cultivate. He would help her for all her understanding that can never be attributed to any one action, but the plethora of actions, in their seeming nonexistence, that subtlety assuaged his fanciful and turbulent psyche. A slob by nature, perhaps he was not so much a slob as messy, lazy, or cluttered; there are many words for it, but unless it is in your nature to live like that, one can never really understand why someone would. For even when the apartment was in its most disarray, he still knew exactly the location of everything; well, for the most part. Not to say that needed things did not mysteriously disappear only to reappear after a short lived furiously verbal cursing search, wheelding to the whim of his anger, coupled with the belief that he was briefly the butt’s joke of the gods, those bastard pixies or muses hiding these things from him. Those mischievous minor deities, unseen and laughing hysterically at his turmoil, with whom he interacted often as they floated and darted through his perception. Ultimately, quieted by a smile arising from within his own condemnation of his misplaced anger, the sense of adventure associated with the fruitless search provided the illusion that his daily rediscovering of his life tipped the scales towards the side of exciting uncertainty over banality. She was there for those times too.

That sort of living frustrated her. Straightening, or keeping house, soothed her, an unconscious physical meditation, mildly challenging and quietly entertaining. Where to place this new thing. Could that look better there? I’ve never seen it like that before. This behavior was always peacefully rewarding. On a good day over cup of her cherished coffee, she enjoyed the contemplation of rearranging the furniture in their apartment, even if the restricted space of the apartment prevented, truly, any change. The furniture ended up two hours later in exactly its original place. The pride of a clean house birthed a calming sense of completion within her. There was a place for everything. Magazines belong under the television stand to the right; receipts rested on the second shelf on the left in the living room cabinet, unpaid bills in the furthest right drawer in the kitchen. This there, and that there, perfectly systematically organized.

However, this woman was by no means meticulous, uptight, or compulsive. She possessed an open freedom of expression and acceptance of others and situations that only caused him to love her more. It reminded him of himself, a characteristic he seldom found in others, but one he dearly liked about himself. Yet, he didn’t love this characteristic of her’s because it reminded of himself as much as it reinforced in him a level of similarity between them deep, unique, and treasured.

But he only knew where things were the last place he left them, not matter where he had. As expected, he constantly asked her where things were, only to receive, yet again, the litany of the proper place of each item. He never really listened except for the item for which he was looking. It just never made sense to him that way. She could see this in his eyes, but it was one of the concessions she made for him.

But that one glance, that one glance as their eyes met half way over her shoulder when she leaned forward fidgeting about the table. That glance, this time. Luckily, he caught it from within his locked, dismal, hypnotic television gaze. It was one of those transcendent, timeless moments, when one’s whole being, completely overwhelmed, struggles and fails to comprehend, intuit, make sense, or reconcile the intangible and tangible feelings for another, a moment without a name. Touched and captivated, prideful, he retained composure as surges of masculinity increasingly pulsed throughout his habitual corpse. He couldn’t take his eyes from her and couldn’t tell if she could feel his gaze. Instinctively, for some irreconcilable reason he could not explain or reflect upon, he let his eyelids temper his stare so as not to let her see his expression. She hadn’t showered, being Saturday, and wearing her favored tattered white cotton tank top, exposing her stomach, and its playfully rounded belly, perfect shoulders, and at the right angle, breasts so feminine and natural, babe and man would gladly share. Coarse reddish brown hair quickly pulled off her face and gathered behind her head, hanging unfettered to the whim of its beautiful gravity, barefoot, and in loosely tied blue sweatpants, it required little imagination to bring forth the vision of her nakedness smoldering behind. Embarrassed and regretful, how he had not noticed her like this for some time, so dearly close and so timelessly beautiful.

She didn’t even look up towards him again. She was not coyly insinuating she required his participation in the cleaning, no expectations, no guilt; nor was she purposefully ignoring him. She was completely within herself, absorbed in her thoughts, ritualistically healing some distant private abscess of her unrecognized psyche. This subtle, quiet purity brought all the more to light her glowing natural beauty, the kind of beauty so many men regret knowing after pride has charged them towards the passions of dreams unfulfilled and away from what life may have mercifully given them.

She reached across his legs to brush some cigarette ashes from the table to the floor, and although he wasn’t in her way, nor was she really conscious of him there, he slowly, purposely, lifted his legs from the table, intentionally drawing her attention, and placed them on the floor. As if awoken from a daydream, she blankly stared at him, unconsciously sitting on the coffee table across from him, disorientated by the direct, focused, and knowing eyes that awaited her recognition.

He reached his left hand out and clasped both her hands as she naturally brought both of them together to meet his. He ran his other hand smoothly down her cheek with the back of his curled knuckles. She smiled, tilting her head shyly downward, softly tightening the union of their hands. Those familiar eyes she knew so well, whose thoughts and intentions she knew without knowing, whose widened blackness gaped not of darkness, but of brilliant light. Those eyes, those eyes, those eyes melted away any of her uncertainty while simultaneously quivering her breath, fluttering her heart, and sending tickles throughout.

She would never know, never. She would never know. Never know how much he truly loved her, and he could never know if he was wrong, or right, or if she knew. And these moments when she meant so much to him were reciprocated through her own eyes, on her her own time, separate from him, personal to her, but shared with him only when he was an object of pure and unquestioned love, as she, in this moment was for him. He loved these moments when the well of his own emotions flooded through him, immobilizing him without thought, as if thought really could posses the capacity for understanding or explanation deserving of this emotion.

“You’re………… you’re beautiful.” His voice stuttered himself as he spoke, halfway through clearing his throat. “Make love to me.”

She broke free of his hands as he let himself relax into the couch, awaiting her decision. She followed his recline with her hands, one cupping his head, the other slowly, establishing her sexuality, through his hair. She leaned back tracing her hands down the side of his face across his hands and into his lap. She smiled, her lip, slightly quivering, moistness in her left eye glistened in the sunlight coming through the window. Reaching forward she took his hands, raised them then letting them fall back on him as she stood. Watching her as she moved around the table and entered the bedroom, she pulled the tank top up her back exposing the lower curvature as she left his view. He followed, removing his shirt and unbuckling his belt.

Pausing at the door, letting his shirt fall to the floor as she laid on her side, naked, resting her head on her hand, her thigh slid forward comfortably covering her sex upon the unkempt sheets of the bed. He unbuttoned his pants allowing them to fall to the floor, but momentarily, their fall was interrupted by his growing excitement. This brought a small giggle from within her sultry smile. She raised a hand beckoning, accepting, and welcoming him. Stepping a out of his pants he joined her, sitting on the side of the bed, feet on the floor, varying his glance between her eyes and the space between his naked feet. Slowly, unexpectedly, a questioning uncertainty crept throughout him, bringing feelings, timid and weak. Questions he could not answer at that moment, that possibly he could never answer, but thought of often, compiling upon themselves, emotions running the gauntlet of extremes. The more he allowed his mind to work, the further he detached.

She answered by slowly stroking his back, arms, shoulders; setting free her hands to travel across him to the whim of their own desire to comfort. She recognized this look of his as it infected his resolve; she knew it well. It is a mindless, uncontrollable flood of emotion and self reflection that governs parts of her lover’s soul, at once, disconnected and divine, yet also entwined and tormenting. Glimpses through its window has shown her intimate parts of her lover saved only for himself, but freely offered to her as respect and adoration. Some of what she has seen within frightens and troubles her almost as much as the beauty and compassion seen reaffirms and encourages the love she returns; and so she has become wary of this unpredictable state. Yet, she knows it is from this place and the conflict it brings, springs the passion and temperament of the man destiny has brought her to love.

“Sugar?” She paused as he reacted, confused and disoriented, to her voice and eyes. “Don’t think about it right now. Lie with me.” He pulled back slightly as he reconciled his previous intentions with his uncontrollable self-absorption, pride hesitating him at the doorway his omniscient lover opened for him, providing a way back. He reacted by focusing his not yet reconstructed self upon her, eyes leading the way, as he hid behind them.

“Why do you love me?” She asked. She had stopped caressing him and lay beside him, awaiting a response, slightly insulted that he would pull that “eyes trick” on her after he had brought her here and then, she had brought him back. But then again that was his nature, to defend himself with subtle intense aggression.

“I’m not quite sure.” It came from within him before he could check it. Her question and his quick and certain response at once shocked and assured them both. “I used to know why I love you, and I still can repeat those reasons; but those reasons are secured in the past and may, or may not, be accurate right now. I know you, and I also know that I’ve forgotten you, or accepted you, and this familiarity may work to mislead my love for you, that pure love, the love you deserve, the love that may tax my ability to love you as I should.” She pressed on, naked, but again aroused by her lover’s honesty.

“So do you love me?” He paused, reflected, and turned completely toward her.

“Yes.” Stern focused, committed and challenging.

She already knew that was to be his answer. She knew things about him long before either of them spoke them; this was one of those times, and her expectations only peeked through the corners of her expression. She liked to put him on the spot; it brought the best out of him. This, when displaced, disassociated, floating above the world beneath him, he was pure. And a significant answer to a well thought question served as a bowline tethering him to the shore. It was magnificent to see the range of cauldering emotions settle and focus in his response.

She also knew that he could sense her completely, abstract body before mind or mind before body, slightly beyond what she expressed, or tried to hide. But she could never truly hide from him, just as he retrospectively knew that she was aroused and inspired by his tormented self-absorbed visions. It was a covenant as grand as between God and Man, and mundane and subtle, as the weed to the earth, unique and unnoticed except by things unsaid of the two.

Yet, as these gifts served to draw them together, equally, they tore them apart. The wounds that scarred this conflict, metaphysically, might have well as been cut into the physical body, so one, as much as the other, could never tear them from their memories any easier than remove healed wounds of the flesh.

“Can you accept that?” he said.

“For now I can, but……you know…… I need……..” she returned.

“Perhaps, more than I can give.”

“Right now.”

“Right now.”

She reached out to him and he let her guided him into their bed. A detante sufficed for the time. No more words were spoken as they melted into one another as only true lovers will. The wind whispered through the blinds and they clicked lightly, splaying simple sunlight upon the lovers entwined. A beautiful image deserving of them both, but seen by neither.

There just be Moonsugar.