Flying Away

She met him at a bar where she had gone dancing and took him home. Their clothes peeled away and she held his flesh in huge handfuls: taking it in; inhaling his energy, his sweat, the heat of the air surrounding him.

He smelled heavy and solid and dense. He smelled like wood and motor oil and dirt--earthy, heavy, solid. Something to hold onto. Something to keep her from flying away like a balloon.

He moved on top of her like a great weight, holding her to the earth so she wouldn't disappear, or vaporize, or melt.

He was real. He was there. He was solid.

Her inarticulate moans pleaded with him not to let go, not to let her fly away where she might never come back. She felt the lava seeping into her, and knew there was to be no border between them any more. For better or worse, it had been obliterated by molten rock which was already cooling and solidifying.

"Oh God," she sighed, spitting the word out like an epithet. "There is only one reason for living, and this is it. Nothing else matters. If I can't have this, I don't have anything."

He kissed her long and warm, and promised, "You can have it. You can have it forever. You can have me every day of every year for the rest of your life, if you want me. I'll give it to you every time, if you want..."

"Only if you promise not to live with me. It just spoils it, you know. That's all I want..."

But he talked her into moving in together, because it seemed so convenient, and practical; and they did it out of habit, and they did it when they didn't feel like it, and they did it when they hadn't bathed for two days and her hair wasn't combed and his pubic hair smelled like urine. And it wasn't sexy any more, so she had to keep her eye out.

She found him easily enough, standing on a corner, looking little-boy helpless and streetwise cocky all at the same time. She couldn't resist his jawline. She was drawn to it. It drew her tongue out of her mouth. It drew her juices out onto her panties. It drew the molten lava up and out again, which had been lying dormant.

So she followed him home and lay naked on his bed and kissed his chest and sucked on his brown nipples. She took him into her body until he couldn't go any further; until she could taste him in her mouth, until her nose was full with his musty scent, until she could see him behind her eyelids and feel him growing in her hair.

And she made him promise he would never live with her. And he didn't. But he left too soon, lured away by other scents and blossoms of another hue.

So she invited the cabbie to the back seat under the bridge at four am, before the color came into the sky.

His breath was hot and she felt it on her neck, inside her elbows, between her thighs. Moist, steamy breath on a cold November day with black, black hair and a moustache, and fuzzy nubs shaven on the back of his neck.

Then she was pregnant, and she knew she couldn't have it, and she cried and said goodbye, and the baby said, "That's okay. I didn't like it here, anyway."

So then she had to be more careful, and she couldn't be careless, because she never wanted to go through that again.

So she found a nice man with kids, who was fixed, and she said, "Teach me everything you know, and I'll tell you my secret."

But his kids were too important, and he didn't have time for such things, and he didn't know it was the One Thing.

So she searched the streets and the faces of strangers, till she met a tall, thin man with long stringy blonde hair, who followed the path of Truth and knew what she knew.

He took her into his bed and into his heart, and he promised not to live with her. He went on journeys, finding the parts of her she had left in the other men, and bringing them back, and laying them at her feet.

So she kissed him, and hugged him, and kissed him again. And she offered her body to him, as she had never offered it before, no longer afraid to fly away, or vaporize, or melt.

And his liquid form took hers, while she looked on from the ceiling, and blessed him, and disappeared, into the place of pure sensation she had always longed to be, and she didn't have to come back any more.