a Clockwork Rabbit

Tinsel was blowing in the air, blowing silver through the crowd. Christmas is never as exciting as it is when you’re 29, in love, and stupidly drunk. He turned to me, sitting here on the couch watching a parade 30,000 miles away but brought right here right now into our own living room. Instead of listening to him I was remembering…

Do you recall…?

I kissed you, girl, a million years ago. New years eve it was. You were laughing in blue lights from the stage. We were pressed close as soldiers in the crowd. It was raining daisies from the sky. That is to say it was misty again.

Your lips were pulled back from  your teeth, it was like staring you in the heart, listening to that laugh.

We knew the men on the stage wouldn’t ever stop playing. We knew that we’d never age. We knew that we were more powerful, more beautiful, more exotic… than ever.

I kissed you girl, do you remember? I pressed my cold lips against  your warm ones and drank you down and down and down again. Everything fell away. The music stopped, the rain halted. The time was nothing and everything and held us up and against itself like a lover.

He speaks and I’m back again. On this couch, in this room, all over. We aged. You lied.

I’m like those streaming bits of silver. Floating on the air and less than light but heavier than you’ll ever imagine. I leap like a hart, crash through short branches with my pulse on the back of my tongue.

“What’s up?” he asks, because he has never kissed you, he’s never touched your mouth and tasted your joy like a thick ambrosia.

He has, however, never lied.

Someday I know, I will be old. I will be slow and gasping, I will be more like a wounded elk than a leaping fawn. He knows. He’s toughed it out with me before. He’s touched my mouth and tasted the salt of my tears. The ravages of my woe.

I think he’s worried that he’ll never be enough. That he’s always going to be on the outside looking in, that he’s always going to live off the leavings of your ghost.

I smile, shake my head, nuzzle into his shoulder.

He is joy. He is truth and pain and laughter and sin. He is beauty and misty mornings. I turn off the TV and it’s festivity.  This fleeting moment is to be caught.