Their Time Together

In their best times together, they loved open-faced, like children, only with the carnal touch. They had met young, so that childlike element discernible in each other became their bond.

At the beginning, she liked his innocence, how everything was wondrous. He liked her wild spirit, how she feared nothing.

His world was visual, and he would always see her this way: long, long legs tanned and smooth, endlessly graceful, tapering down to slender ankles, an exquisitely arched heel. She had a defiant look, she took on the world and laughed in its face. His thoughts of her are limned by a celluloid haze—all a series of pictures—high contrast, color saturated, often slow-frame. Afterwards, he would bury his face into her hair, a loving mass that was deeply black, fragrant, and absolutely forgiving.

Her world was words, and she always thought of him in careful phrases: gentle spirit, warmest of hands, keeper of found smiles, the grinning boy in the sepia pictures, how only he can make her laugh this way, boy who will teach her there is no shame in being soft, being happy.

Afterwards, she would arc lovingly into him, marveling at how easily their youthful bodies meld, as though responding to cues from ancient memory. He is her summer shore, her strange awakening, and it is to him that she comes home.

It was mostly like that, their time together.
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