9.08.2005

Cave Dwellers

It started with kissing. The mouths she had encountered before his were thin, like slits cut through sheets of white paper. His lips, by contrast, was insurmountable and vast. His mouth, a cave. It turned out, they both had spaces and crevasses. They spelunked.

Their conversations were brief and pointless. They were sixteen. Her life's reach could be measured with one hand stretched across a map of the Northeastern states.

It is fourteen years later and they have no stories that do not somehow include the other. Their kisses are sharp and requisite, like immunizations. They have reached a summit that is neither thrilling or dangerous, but the vista is commodious.

When she closes her eyes to sleep, she knows that some women spend all their lives looking for what she has. In those moments, she curses the sentimental movie makers. She rues the poets and the songwriters for perpetuating the pangs of despised love.

Still, she can't help but long for vertigo.

It is in her nature to yearn.

She looks at him and remembers that she got what she asked for. It was winter when she went looking for him last. Her winter was oppressive. They had been separated for five years, but she still had a map to him. She had been longing for his stalactites.