317: Ember Hand

You found me in this river, swimming.
You found me in this ocean, the sea before the sea.

A virgin I watched, as waters lapped above me, the pool enriching the substance of my heat.

Misery was captured in the bubbles, foam perched beyond the horizon, distance haunting and calling me free.

I came, as one often comes, for dinner of delight; my appetite wrapped in folded crimson napkin; my supper less for cause than for circumstance.

For I wanted to dance, and with you I wished to breathe.

I came from the depths of the blue, no more familiar to this land than the sturgeon to the vine of the trees.

How I dug my feet in the sand, like a summer day that first kisses your forehead.
I moved, a child to this world, in a way I both recognized and denied, an innocence so refined.

I watched for you, a symphony to my senses, ripping apart my insides so that they fluttered out a butterfly of sorts, dancing about your grave stone and singing to the heaven’s lords.

I turned and danced merrily, your shadow still beneath, your image laid down in the earth’s grumblings.

You were vision.
You were sensuality.
You were the purpose for which I left my castle of the sea and stepped upon the land, less naked than guised in the wonderment of unfamiliar.

I shivered from the bounty before me, all decorated in the drapes of uncertainty, and I wished, with my delicate heart, to find you where you rested, a man of my waiting.

I whispered into the shells I carried: “Hello, my sweet beneath me. Hello, my land of man. Hello, my angel dreaming. Hello, my ember hand.”

And I twirled in the dress of satin white, knitted and laced, sewn with the grandest of merriment, the child I be.

In my youth I would dream you into existence and just be; you as my soldier true returned from where it was you went; me, your diamond carved for scarlet string draped around your nape.

And I would rest there, in my vision, my skin upon your skin, sparkling as if we’d both been kissed by father sun.

I’d rest and feel the beat from that of one I’d wished upon. A star wrapped into the golden skin of you. How you shined so brightly but dimmed enough to soothe me to the place of shore-light’s lullaby; woven to sleep by your gentle grace.

My gentle man you were, as I sat along the side of your shadow buried, embraced by the near presence of the name of you. So calm your ways, so free and without the weight of what this world does bring.

I harbored you there, inside of me, not once, not twice, but for eternity, in this mingled embrace.

Kiss me I dreamed you to say, and knew that the fire that grew was not a demon birthed but the essential purpose of my being.

For twin sparked twin and ember came, again and again, like the fire that shows his last light before dying to the night sky.

Take me, I sang, and you did.

I held you there inside my dream, my lips smeared with the grace of where you’d touched, my hunting seized, my search swallowed, my destiny claimed and staked where the hold once be.

No longer empty, I clung on to the hope of return.

No longer forlorn and broken, I edged my own self up around my edges and found one where two once stood.

For you had gone, and in your leaving left me half again, not less, but more in my making.

And still I sit here, the waters below me, my breath breathing, my will willing you forward.

But I find you not, this angel you be; I find you not, for forever is before me no more, only the ocean of endless tomorrow in which you exist not; neither ripped away from past or brought forward to future, in the cyclic cycle of new dawn after new dawn.

You are a wavering memory, wiped clean before tasted, swept out of the eyes before entering, and I am left wondering if you ever came or I wished it so to be.

Samantha Craft, February 2013

316: 50 Reasons to Leave Your Lover

Me 4

1. He tells you as he is making out with you, “Someday your future boyfriend will be really glad I taught you this.”

2. He corrects and critiques the way you break your bread, showing you how to separate the roll into four equal pieces.

3. He stays up all night scraping the black factory-painted pinstripe off of his truck because he can’t sleep until it’s entirely gone.

4. He stays up all night making cardboard hotels for cats, convinced he will be rich off of his invention.

5. He owns a limo, but it turns out he’s the driver, and he likes to tell you often what he watches the passengers doing in the backseat.

6. He explains that he likes you a lot, and will share a bed with you, but doesn’t feel comfortable sitting on the same couch as you.

7. He steals your expensive perfume bottle (again) and “secretly” gives it as a present to his other girlfriend.

8. He doesn’t have driving insurance and totals his truck while on a secret rendezvous to the mountains with his other lover, and then asks you to come get him at the hospital.

9. He says, after your first dinner date, which he planned to be out of town, that he is too drunk to drive home but has conveniently already booked a hotel room nearby.

10. He promises he just wants to cuddle.

11. He says he has a romantic surprise for you, and when you enter the room there is a “toy” and a video camera set up.

12. His father tells you, after your lover has gone missing for three days: “He is just like me, a player, and he ain’t changing.”

13. His mother takes you out to an intimate lunch and tells you, “You are so smart and lovely and kind, why are you with my son?”

14. He takes you to an antique store to teach you have to shoplift.

15. He sells you a stereo that he bought with his roommates “stolen” credit card.

16. He doesn’t come and find you when you run out of the house crying.

17. He calls his ex-girlfriend when you are still in bed together.

18. He has rearranged the photos of you as a couple each time you come over.

19. He lives with his sister, has no job, is addicted to pain-killers, and is a chain-smoker.

20. He makes you gag.

21. He makes you wish you lived on another planet.

22. He says, “I don’t love you, I’m certain.”

23. He is the roommate of the other really odd guy you dated.

24. He has an ex-wife that warns, “Watch out, he is trouble.”

25. He enters a room and every woman wants to give him his number, and he takes them.

26. He has deep dark brown bedroom eyes, and he knows it.

27. He shows up late all the time, and always has a very detailed excuse.

28. He says, “It depends, are you planning on losing weight,” when you ask him if you should cut your hair shorter.

29. He tells you how to dress.

30. He tells to wear long fake fingernails painted pink.

31. He is in therapy with you and seeing another therapist with his wife.

32. He enters the athletic gym, and the male employees look at you, raise a brow, and say in a derogatory tone, “That’s your boyfriend?”

33. He was the first man you saw after breaking up with your other boyfriend who was the first man you saw.

34. He claims he cannot tell you where he lives because it is a temporary situation and he can’t give you his phone number because he doesn’t have a phone.

35. He plans a party and not one person shows up.

36. He asks your father for your hand in marriage, shortly after his mistress, holding a baby, kicks down his apartment door in an attempt to kill you.

37. He does things with himself at stop signs you know are plain wrong, but he insists everyone does it.

38. He lies to his mother.

39. He yells at you because you packed the camping ice-chest wrong.

40. He tells you that your suspicions about his cheating on you means you are paranoid.

41. He likes beer with his breakfast.

42. He takes you out to drink “brain freeze” alcoholic shots for the first date.

43. He tells you all about his special adventures with his guy friend, with a twinkle of love in his eyes.

44. He takes you to a party and you find him half-naked in the bathroom with his ex-girlfriend, and he claims she is helping to adjust his Halloween costume.

45. He tells you how you could be prettier.

46. He asks you to buy something for his mother’s birthday because he can’t afford it.

47. He takes you on an out-of-state trip, via airplane, to his hometown and disappears in the early morning to meet up with a past lover.

48. He calls you from a phone booth, a few blocks away, claiming he is out-of-town working for a few days.

49. He doesn’t say, “You are beautiful.”

(He points out your mistakes often, like forgetting to add number 50 to this list.)

Please protect your aspie daughter. Teach her she is worthy. Love her unconditionally. Pay attention to her. She doesn’t know as much as you think she does. She thinks, like herself, that everyone is kind-hearted and filled with good intention. Teach her about red flags, about predators, about liars, about trickery, and about manipulation. Teach her about appropriate behavior and conduct. Consider her an angel on earth, uneducated about the ways of this world. Hold her and cherish her. And above all teach her how special she is.

This was my first album; I used to play this song over and over and over. I memorized all the lyrics. I was so awesome.

Random thought: What if the reason why my dog is so very happy to see me every morning is because in her reality one night is 100 years!