Those particular you's - my under 21 life

I may never revisit those who were an essential part of my young me, but I will never forget and value the reverie of when:

you asked me to kiss you, braces and all - at the park because you knew I was too shy to ask,

or the place behind the school under the Ginko tree where we entangled ourselves - teenagers rolling around on the ground,

or that shared kiss on the cheek - behind the coat rack at the roller skating rink,

or when we drove out on the gravel back roads under the powerlines and made out in your parent's green Dodge,

or that night during the swim dance at the community pool where you held me up in the water as we kissed and spun around to the music,

or how I drove us around on the back roads in my dad's car for 127 miles but never stopping even though I wanted to, but didn't have the courage to do so,

or seeing you by chance on the next street over from my parent's house - kissing but never mentioning or talking about it ever again,

or when you sat next to me because you were worried for me at that party - stroking my hair because I was mostly passed-out from taking too many recreational drugs,

or when our friend drove us around while we made out in the back of her mom's old blue station wagon,

 

or when we laid on the thick red shag carpet of your 3rd floor apartment - together all night long and simply fell asleep looking at each other.

* * *

Sia, before most of you knew her:

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More than All Ever Beauty

Against the Sahara sand
and to its soft conform
the nape, curve and languish
of your smooth skin rests

I held you here - fast
in my heart and in my fancy
and hoped for desert stars
to be whispered as your eyes

Here rests a quiet desire
where beauty is not
by pencil or of powder
but is tendered in morning

This unending moment
more than all ever beauty
is when I helplessly dream
of touching your hair


* * *

Once, in this same mineral Sahara, I was taught that a dream might partake of the miraculous. Again I had been forced down, and until day dawned I was helpless. Hillocks of sand offered up their luminous slopes to the moon, and blocks of shadow rose to share the sands with the light. Over the deserted work-yard of darkness and moonray there reigned a peace as of work suspended and a silence like a trap, in which I fell asleep.

When I opened my eyes I saw nothing but the pool of nocturnal sky, for I was lying on my back with outstretched arms, face to face with that hatchery of stars. Only half awake, still unaware that those depths were sky, having no roof between those depths and me, no branches to screen them, no root to cling to, I was seized with vertigo and felt myself as if flung forth and plunging downward like a diver.

But I did not fall. From nape to heel I discovered myself bound to earth. I felt a sort of appeasement in surrendering to it my weight. Gravitation had become as sovereign as love. The earth, I felt, was supporting my back, sustaining me, lifting me up, transporting me through the immense void of night. I was glued to our planet by a pressure like that with which one is glued to the side of a car on a curve. I leaned with joy against this admirable breast-work, this solidity, this security, feeling against my body this curving bridge of my ship.

~ From: Wind, Sand and Stars, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry