Oh, Yes.
She pushed me up against the wall, hard. Her eyes had the manic glaze I’d come to recognize in one of my ex’s that still sent shivers down my spine. Nothing good can come of this was the last coherent thought I remember having before everything went warm and fuzzy and then turned into a slow molasses sort of slide into oblivion. I don’t remember exactly how we got to the floor, but her arms wrapped themselves around me in a blissful tangle. Breathing was both effortless and deliciously hard to do. It’s the little things. Her lips brushed my neck as she pressed closer. An epic unfolded, fractal-like, as I tried to figure out how to get us up. It’s hard to get off the ground when there’s a universe being born. Everything I touched was a cascade of light, she was unbearable, radiant, bliss in the shape of a woman. I lifted her off the linoleum, so light, so fluid. The wallpaper supported us, clung to us in a sea of light, sustained us. I pressed my shoulders against it’s faded whirling roses, green and pink. Breath, breathe. We are alive, right now. She clung to me, like the wallpaper, arms around my neck, cheek pressed against my breastbone. I hold her as tightly as I can with one arm. Have to keep one hand on the wallpaper roses; I can feel them trying to bloom, pinkly. She tells me about everything she feels, the cotton weave of my shirt, the roughness of my jeans, the feathers in my hair, the heat of my skin. She tells me what would be amazing as each moment passes; lying in the grass, dancing, the swing-set down the road. We walk, arm in arm down the hallway. It’s difficult to leave the roses, but I know it’s better this way. She sighs against me, and because our hands are palm to palm, her bliss is my bliss. We are floating down the hallway, and suddenly it seems too bright. She agrees. We have to get to the screen porch, the old couch and the patchwork quilts. The quilts are important. They are a collection of information, each square a separate bit that has been sutured to other bits. We undertake this journey, a mutual purpose. The screen door must be touched. It sings when fingers graze the mesh, but we keep going. Sink into the couch together. We made it. We can sit here forever; the cicadas sing for us.
