The Flowers That Take Root In Rain

"We sometimes encounter people, even perfect strangers, who begin to interest us at first sight, somehow suddenly, all at once, before a word has been spoken."

--Dostoyevsky

I remember the scent of sweat on your neck and our lips sore with too much kissing and the way your mouth tasted.

I remember how you tasted like the sea and how the rain was as silver as Chicago. Your shampooed hair. Taking you in the cab. The beery pulling at your clothes. Your mouth. Your long, smooth legs. Every inch of you like a dream to be mapped and explored.

Every second of you left me wanting more.

There were golden bubbles that sparkled the night. Your luggage everywhere in my hotel room. Your hands freeing my cufflinks. Your fingers in my mouth. Your oceanic eyes and your hair like silk and coffee.

A circle of black clouds above you in December.

How I loved the way you looked at me. How I saw you on the street and knew that we would never be this young again and so we said yes to everything, to all of it, to everything that the night offered, to everything that the champagne poured into the new year.

Crumpled sheets and gray light. The warmth of your naked body entwined in mine. January rain jeweling the windows and not a leaf on a tree anywhere. A light sigh of snow and hope. A new year.

I liked kissing you in the morning.

I remember the curl of your handwriting on your luggage tags and how soft you looked in a gray t-shirt, hair wet from the shower.

The perfume you left on the sink.
Half empty: a reminder; a fragrant memory.

A signature upon the urgent December wind.

A trace of two hearts beating fast in the fading winter night, quickening like footsteps; quickening like city rain.

About a fling with a girl that I literally met on the street in Chicago on New Year's Eve. We were inseparable for three days and then I never heard from her again. I hope she is well.