A Silly Girl and a Selfish Boy.

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I remember it. I put a hand on each warm, flushed cheek and looked into those desirous eyes, far more desirous than I was prepared for and in a way that meant danger for me. I kissed the part of his face just out of the grasp of his lips and grinned, taunting him. We were like eight year olds and I wasn't ready to let him catch me. It started to rain and he ran his hands up the back of my shirt greedily, shifting me on his lap. Being there, powerful in his embrace, I could feel eagerness spread throughout my body. I was so close. We were so close and nobody was around. If this was ready it sure as hell wasn't defined but maybe one thing would lead to another and I'd know it when we got there.

I wrinkled my nose and gave him that pretend goodbye look and smiled. Just then I leaned in with my forehead against his and closed my eyes, sinking into the feeling of goosebumps along my arms from the cold rain. He slid his hand down my spine and rested it on my back pocket, sneaking the other up to my neck. With familiar fingers he  pushed the base of my neck so my lips rested against his and tried to kiss me. I refused to part my lips, smiling so that he could feel my dimples against his cheeks. He was also in too much of a hurry, that boy. He sighed and rubbed his nose against mine. When I could postpone it no longer I gently seized his lower lip and let him in. He kissed me like he had so long ago. Like when we were together.

After all that. After all that effort, you would think happily ever after, right? We kissed forever but that was not enough. I wasn't enough. I'll never forget that first kiss in the rain, something I'd always seen in the movies, that illusive thing that all online surveys ask you about, that experience you have to have before you have led a completely romantic life. I thought that would be it for a while. But, like all things, it's about the moment and not longevity. It's a lot like Christmas morning: incredibly anticipated with expectations that drop to the ground dead right after you finish opening your last gift. Everything ends up in the trash one day or the batteries die. Some people grind you to the ground with your unconditional love for them and need to be taken out. Unfortunately now we all have a landfill of disrespect and distrust, hurt and fear, bad heartbreaks and bad relationships. Here is to firsts and better yet, here is to lasts because that's for hell sure one kiss I'll never go looking for again.

Dangerous Comparisons.

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We were sitting in the diner. Or cafe. All the same. Tin chairs that wobbled with every shudder or gut-shaking laugh. Tables that bore the scars of lost battles with water marks and cold coke cans. She looked over a frail shoulder at a girl walking down the aisle. Of course she wasn't alone in watching the designer bag gripped by perfectly sculpted nails and heels attached to long, divinely-shaped legs, saunter saucily away.

She sighed. "You know I've never been chic." Rubbing the corner of her mouth with one hand, she shook her head and flicked ash off her cigarette.

An attractive waitress with a friendly smile balanced a tray of drinks in one hand bravely, raising it above the head of some clod who wasn't paying attention to where he was walking.

She looked at her longingly. "And I've never been graceful."

Picking a dull nail, she looked up at me awkwardly with a crooked grin and then back down at the table, staring pensively at a chipped saucer, the off-white, past its prime coat of paint being kept company by a few meaningless but nevertheless present crumbs. Brushing them aside, she said, "I suppose when you have never been beautiful you pick up honesty and rationality in the absence of a pretty face."

She was right. Her face would never be on the side of a bus for some makeup ad and she wasn't the pretty little waitress that was going to marry the high school quarterback but there was something poetically beautiful about her insecurities;  there was something to be desired about her incomplete appearance and wispy hair, yes, but something tangible and appealing all the same.

What We Do With Freedom.

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I stared into her eyes in absolute amazement, heat radiating from the her center as the sun beat down on the brown shades which blended, flooded, and raged across her contours. Stepping on a piece of dry grass, I doublechecked my footing, afraid to see her go at the sudden movement. Her tender eyes made me feel as if I had been standing in this same spot with her for the past hundred days.

"You're beautiful." I whispered, stroking the bone just below her ear.

It was like staring at a sprite or a muse or demi-god. She was real. She was connected to the Earth and she bore the marks of mud and drying winds but at the same time she was Pegasus. She had the soul of Florence Nightingale and the fierceness of a wild stallion on a heated horizon.

"You're beautiful." I said. 

Imagine it. Imagine, in this world full of charts and maps and degrees, the dissection of every forest and possible wilderness by man, there still being something so wild and true to its form. A creature so tame in heart but free physically with no binding or fences or corrals. This, this was a horse.

As I stroked the fiery chestnut mane which danced from her ears down to sculpted back, I began to feel entranced. With each tug, I held on longer. With each grip, my fingers held tighter. Still staring patiently at me, she shook her mane but there was no fly. She did not step back and I averted my greedy gaze. She was beautiful, that was for sure. Like a little boy who has seen his first pony, I wanted to keep her. Oh to think if I had a horse like that.

I patted her jaw and turned on my heels, walking away. Imagine being something so free. Imagine man leaving it alone. Imagine it being able to escape man's grasp and the forever growing web of highways. Imagine it escaping me.

As I turned to allow one more parting glance to the girl, I half-expected her not to be there, for her to be some middle of the afternoon dream I was having. But she was there, long lashes curtaining those watchful eyes which followed me. Then I saw there was something in the distance, a man on a horse with a rope in one hand on a shotgun at his hip. He was riding toward her like a pioneer into the wilderness. And that was how I knew it was not a dream.