I've seen lightening fork its way through the middle of an ancient oak tree, a long way's away across a field in Illinois. I remember that it made a snap and a hiss and another wide noise that cracked the air between here and there, splitting my senses in two.
(Love is like that in my mind - cleft in twain through violent, beautiful, sundered ways.)
When I think of love, it smells like ozone sticking to the heavy asphalt beneath the clouds. It is the smell of rain approaching, of lightening gathering, and of thunder and light upon your skin.
...
"Summer"
Late August belongs to the cicadas - to their fat wide bodies and their awkward skinny legs and their talkative wings that buzz the air around us - sticky and dense and alive with the heat of summer. I look at you in the pale yellow porchlight as you lean forward, watching the sky melt into a dazzling blueorangepurple smear.
There are moths kissing against the porch ceiling in strange, organic rhythms, and I think I am beginning to finally understand their meaning, as you turn to me and say something.
The fireflies are twinkling lovesongs, you say, and - quietly - I agree.
...
"Autumn"
The earth snaps beneath my feet as I walk myself home; the ground is sticks and twigs and the obliterated remnants of leaves. Flotsam and jetsam from the trees above - red and yellow and brown-smelling - collect at the edges of the sidewalks with dry whispery sounds. Birds collect on the telephone lines above and in the balding trees, complicating their silhouettes.
There is no frost, but there will be soon - shivering on the dying grass like mist clinging to your hair in the early morning.
I pull an orange leaf from my hair and save it to send to you.
...
"Winter"
It's snowing where I am.
The world outside is distorted and fuzzed-out, like too much white noise on the telly. Minute shards of glittering ice fall, heavy and straight to the ground without floating -- they plummet and pull through the air. Tiny, doomed things. The snowflakes catch on my eyelashes, threatening to melt onto the insides of my glasses as I push them farther up the bridge of my nose with a numb fingertip.
The wind picks up, pushing greedily against my face. Pulling my jacket closed tightly, I breathe mist and dream smoke and think of you.
