Re-surfacing.

                                        This is a different kind of love.

                              Love, she wonders; could they even call it that? No, this is more primal, raw. A slow, ungodly uncoiling of languorous desire. Ah, in all my turbulent, tumultuous life, have I ever known love? Or; how many kinds of love have I known- so many that she cannot fathom which version of it was the one that was real.

                        They cannot keep their hands off each other. In broad daylight, with genial people strolling around the open racecourse- middle-aged couples in jogging tracks and shorts, old grandfathers in sweatpants leading impish grandchildren away from the swings- his hand reaches for hers under cover of the round wooden table. Grasps a finger and strokes it gently, up and down, caressing. Slowly at first and then more roughly, in a stronger, insistent movement; demanding. There is almost something sexual in this slow, measured rubbing of her one finger, hot heat generating through the friction of skin on skin. A long, slow, sensuous caress. She feels the calloused skin of his palms, hard knots of flesh at the base of his fingers; and wonders again, like she has done so many times before, what has made them so rough.

                             Over the table top she nods and laughs, makes conversation. Angled across from her he is laughing too, shifting back one shoulder carelessly in that peculiar way of his that she loves. The setting sun washes over his head, a final burst of trembling light, silhouetting him in gilded shadow. The halo effect, she thinks vaguely. And in that moment she knows that she will remember him this way forever, in the dark blue-and-black chequered shirt, his dark denims, soft lips stretched into that beautiful wide smile. His back held straight in that stiff way of his when his spine was giving him trouble. The little concentrated furrow between the eyebrows, one that denoted pain, wiped away in a flash as his ready smile lit up at the slightest joke, but returning again. Only if you knew him well would you notice it, the slight frown of discomfort. And it is beautiful to her, because she knows him.

                             The world seems frozen in place, a tremulous, semi-solid globe of light. A child carries an ice cream coated in chocolate, the dark liquid dripping down cone turned soft and mushy in the heat. A dog wanders around, then sits itself down in the middle of the path to scratch an itch on the back of its ear. She is happy. So this is peace, she thinks, and the thought is comforting. To think that peace settles down on one like this, slowly, like a cloud of dust settling back to earth, like a light fall of invisible snow, here in the middle of the crowded racecourse buzzing with happy people on their evening promenades. Sitting across from him, with only their knees barely touching, making easy, open conversation with the friend sitting beside him; while under the table his fingers search for, and lock quietly around hers. They don’t look at each other, but they are connected, joined down there by their two fingers. She laughs, and her laugh has a warm, throaty golden note, and he catches it. His ear tilts towards her, ever so slightly, while with that beautiful smile on his mouth he continues to discuss sports, the news- ever-mediocre details- with the boy before him. Eyes steadfast on the friend right across from him, but under the table near her knee his hand tightens on hers. 

                         A gentle peace settles down on her, around her; she is present but yet detached from the moment, surveying the world as through a glass bubble where nothing can touch her. Slow, weightless tranquility wraps around her in a gauzy layer, sight and smells and sounds mingled into one easy, golden glow.

                            The times he let himself go, she almost loved him with a fire. The time he lost himself in the darkness of the cinema and pushed her back on the hard leather seats, the discordant armrests jarring uncomfortably into her spine, and kissed her like he’d never let her go. Leaning over her, the entire length of his upper body pressing into hers, his rough hands grazing the sides of her face and running deep into her hair. She had never been kissed so passionately. In the semi-gray dark she had her eyes open as they kissed and watched his face illuminated by the liquid bluish glow of the screen. And then when he went home that night, his voice “I can still smell your perfume on my shoulder. The side where you were.”

                                    Walking her home down the busying street when at nightfall the soft city lights of subterranean Bambalapitya were just coming out to play, he pulled her into a darkened alley-road parked with empty cars and indolent three-wheelers. And with the slow throb of the city rising around them, pulsating, he drew her to him and kissed her yielding mouth. She felt the entire length of his body against hers, a perfect symmetrical fit, exactly the same in height. How she loved a man in office suit, the smartness of his straight back in a shirt tucked cleanly in. His thick, masculine neck above the collar, the fine larynx protruding.his was maleness in the throat, the firm chest, the solid neck. She moulded herself into him and they only drew apart for a slow car that eased past, sweeping them in a blur of yellow light. Everything was blurred in her brain, the dark, the sea wind, the city’s soft hum. His laughing mouth, curved like a scythe in the hue of a streetlight. They were mindless with happiness.

                               Boy, you told me not to go too deep into this, not take it to the emotional level. Not to get attached; but now who’s going there baby? In the dark my eyes are open but yours, yours are closed as our mouths meet and mould together in that slow, hypnotic dance and I keep my eyes open just to watch the workings of those strong, godly lips. Your mouth is in the shape of a knife and my lips tease, grazing near the cutting edge and just escaping that beautiful razor rim. Slow and succulent like raw plums that you slice with your passion and leave purple and bruised but oh it is not me giving in baby, not me whose breath comes faster in a rough pant, whose white teeth grip my lower lip and pull me in. I know what I do to you. I know what I do to you; and I taste the clear flavour of your saliva as your tongue twists onto mine, one strong muscle, latches on and circulate to one rhythm and boy it’s not me going too deep now- tell me, is it me? And our bodies were made for this joining somewhere before time itself, for who would have thought how sexual a mere kiss can be when it’s your mouth and mine combined, you breathing in the air that I breathe out, moulding one shape between us; you my parallel, I, yours, in some moment that was fashioned before you were you, and I was me; and either of us ever came to be.

                                    Glory is looking at that mouth and thinking, I have been there. I have tasted those lips, kneaded them like dough, melted them into wine. In the middle of normal conversations with people, talking and laughing, watching his wide mouth curve and into its beautiful smile, it hits you: I have been one with those lips. And you know it will not last, this volatile summer, this heated, senseless fling, but you do not mind. If you could you would do it again, all over again; and you know you'd have it no other way. Non-attachment in love is perhaps the easiest, most painless road.

 

                                 Hot summer nights, mid July, when you and I were forever wild.
                                 The crazy days, city lights; the way you'd play with me like a child,

                                Words stuck on replay. Your pretty face and electric soul-

                               Lying on the soft couches at Chocolante at past ten in the night, she watches the water in the shisha tube gurgle and bubble as the fragrant smoke drifts over them. Kiwi-flavoured. She has never watched people smoking shisha before, and she eyes with fascination the way they blow ring after ring of white smoke that rise in the air like circular dreams. His head is on her lap and he looks up at her, his brown eyes gazing at her face. “What?” she asks, smiling, and he shakes his head in a “Nothing,” and, with a quick turn of his head, kisses her tummy. Her belly clenches with a fire that she cannot explain, but it is not lust, for her whole soul is at peace. Nothing but the gurgle of fragrant water in the belly of the long shisha tube, and the sound of slow water gushing down an artificial waterfall nearby, and the soft, trance-like music. The weight of his head on her lap. The pale sweet smell of the fruit-flavoured smoke that wove before her eyes, making her suddenly sleepy. She massages his scalp with her fingertips and he lets her, letting her touch his hair, which he hated anyone touching. He sighs and settles into her lap, closing his eyes as she caresses his head, and she knows again that this is her kind of peace.

                              Already she knows, he wouldn't understand, whoever may come next. The next man. Would not grasp the brevity, yet unending seamlessness, of that electric summer fling. But she will not think of all that now. For now, she thinks, she will live in the moment; in the gush of the water surrounding her skin, his hair underneath her fingers falling short through the spaces between, the smoke rings rising in clouds and melting into the overhead black sky. In this moment, and this feeling. Carpe diem, she breathes to herself. Carpe diem.