The Truth Is Water-Dependent
Lazuli
The water runs wild in these parts, dripping and seething through the canopy. It hangs over the forest like an omen, clouding sensory perception, forcing introspection. The trees whisper to me in forgotten (wet) tongues. There is a house with two doors and no walls, set into the hillside. From here, I can watch the water run past, run over, run through, playing a roof-top rhythm, under which I can dance and sing. I try to hold myself under the weight of the water, beyond the weight of the world.
His eyes are blue, too. They meet me somewhere I haven’t stayed long.
My legs carry me into the trees, away from his soiled knees. And his wide-brimmed hat, his mismatched chopsticks, the guitar resting upon his chair.
When will I be brave enough to return his stare?
His fingers play fluid hopscotch along the strings. Left-over dragon fruit; an orange already segmented. Dancing in short-stepped circles as we wait for the toaster to finish. Later, he serves me coffee in a wine glass. I hold it carefully between middle fingers, like an adult, like him.
An arc of madness, blue-eyed thirst, tracing shapes through the smoke. A stained-glass haze, he won’t hold my gaze, but he will spend an eternity between my thighs. He will strum the guitar as if it speaks to him, responding in fits and bursts of blood-shot lust. The fabric of his stare falls in circles around me, patterns of play like the plucking of fingers on strings, the clench of palms behind shoulders. My tongue meets the rib of his reach and the morning finds us, red, dripping.
A world of wetness and wood. Himalayan salt lamp; hand-made gifts on every surface. We talk about the number 555 together. Our faces are obscured by the oppression (and liberation) of darkness. His last lover had auburn hair, an exotic name to match. I wear plain underwear and ask him what he’s grateful for. He says that weed will be the catalyst to our relationship, exhaling our inhibitions with the sour smoke. He says that sleeping in the same bed will connect us physically, emotionally, energetically. It’s 2am — he eats cold pasta mixed with sauerkraut. And chilli. Chilli, chilli, chilli. The raw heat of it creeps into his eyes, stinging them into silence. The quietness of it all, behind the guitar and the whispers and the clatter of possums across the roof.
In the middle of the night, he puts on his tuxedo jacket, turning to me, he says;
What you choose to wear might change your life.
His tongue must have been sticky with the red liquid of my love. He says it was an honour; he says it was beautiful.
Thirty minutes of music — my body moves, his hands drum. Cacao chai, and the candle burns itself out. He touches almost everywhere except my lips, a finger-less grip, moving the force in a circle back towards me. The moonlight hits my throat in all tones of blue. The only sound to be heard is his rasping inhale, skin stretched over his right jaw-line.
We sleep aside, spread-eagle in our own half of the world. I want to bridge this difference, to pull him close. His breathing becomes more laboured as he sleeps. When I cry, he holds me until the sheets are spattered. My palm on his heart-space, his fingers on my belly. We breathe into each other’s energy, under the crochet blanket his grandmother knitted for him, two thousand kilometres away.
Milky-white like the August moon, my car pulling into the drive-way at dusk. He was waiting outside the door, to lift me up in excitement, his hat sailing toward the dirt as we span around and around.
It’s good to see you.
In the light of midday, they say he ran with buckets of water to extinguish the fire he set in the woods. Three burn piles and he lit them all, one by one, without preparation. I think about whether he has lit me the same way, careless and cathartic all at once.
And my flames threaten to destroy it all.