what is it like, this world of waves?

a love letter

In the evening, said Rhoda, the plaza is cool; small salamanders crawl between the stones and pools of soft lamplight collect under the quiet lemon tree. Footfalls cross the air and soon they crash gently against the old tiles, echoing. Thin shades blow across the shadow-spotted space, and I am one of them. We glide between tables long abandoned and I catch myself in the glint of a glass. I pull myself from them; they pull themselves from me, all in shards.

A man sits halfway in shadow under a dark canopy. His eyes are closed, his cheeks sag with sleep. I pick his face apart: it is soft and like snow. It is covered in rocks and ridges I cross with conspiring glances. I place one foot in front of the other: spanish hills sharp and stolid; the life of another. The moss grows and soon it covers even our lips. Now a guitar catches on the dusk, quivering; a note stands apart, then the next. They begin to fall faster, drops which collect against the pale blue filled with something like sadness. 

Before, when the noon covered me all in silk I watched everything shimmer. White butterflies flickered between little bells of gold and there was no hint of night. I listened to the day, and how it turned. Great gears under the surface of things, something that thrashes under the foam. Light and sound begin to build and all at once the wind a knife slices across the square. The bells chime: it is nine; a swallow dives; I hear the long torrent and the lightning shatter. I fall between the waves, awash between crests which catch the last bits of light, and they close above me like great oak doors: the cafe closes its doors for the night, cerrado, and its people trickle out into the evening. 

All is still and dark. Old stones red with age line the wall; there is a lemon tree; there is a balcony with its doors thrown wide. I see a curtain of white linen, backlight, billowing. I hear a lament, a lullaby; three threads that dance over the surface of a pale bloom; the lemon leaves make little waltzes and the shadows begin to turn in the twilight. 

Two forms take shape between folds of light and of fabric. They stand apart, still rippling. I trace their outlines with my fingers, I can feel how they watch themselves in the others’ stillness. Then they twist together, slowly at first, just their arms reaching past the space between things. They sway behind the linen; they pour out into the evening from the balcony with its doors cast open. 

There was another night when we stood beneath the sky, I leaning from the edge of the balcony, Jinny all golden and flowing. I watched her running through the garden, pulling along some lovestruck boy, barely glancing back. Soon she returned, alone, and we just looked at each other. That night we were moonstained, and young; we stared at the stars and heard them cry. That night I listened to the doors swing on their hinges and feared for my life. Now I read her letters from across the sea, and she tells me how she carries herself through drawing rooms and evenings and still finds love on the faces of things; in letters which trail off the page I tell her that I have none, that I am wreathed in ivy; how irrevocable we are, and how many things I could tell you.

The shadows move together now, pulled close, swaying in time. I hold myself between moonbeams; I stand out no more than the desert, flickering and thawing. Far beyond these walls and the forests behind them there are mountains that rise above fields that run on beyond the edge of the world, and dark fountains that sputter between tall white columns; but here tonight those walls too hold the world in. The sky is a square dim and dusk. It opens above my head, and I am reticent under its glow. Our shoulders touch and we whisper our souls, to the moon first, then each other. Our edges tinged with purple we watch the day until we are torn apart: the sky is indigo; and the stars violent. We dash ourselves against the cliffs and watch the sun set like clouds and the sea.