Archive-name: SpecMome/inspring.txt

Archive-author: Josh Purinton

Archive-title: In The Springtime





    Cold calculating click of keys, NeXT keyboard sleek and white and  

black... and black...

    I can't remember the time... Green it was all day long the grass

growing up to around my knees bursting over the soft earth and I am happy

for once in my life.

    Her soft face piercing eyes the cherry smell of lipstick smooth

pressing against my lips her tongue entering my mouth again and again...

Completely dark place, car has just passed.  Middle of the dirt road,

middle of the night.  

    Later lying in a field on our backs grass so high you can't look

side to side.

    "Can I touch your breast?"

    She considers for a moment.  "No."

    "Ok."

    It seems simpler now, and I let that slip away, but the river was

blue and white and flowing quickly and we did a project together down there

by the pebbles and rocks.  And in the garden the next day her jeans fit

well and lifting plants out of the dirt was not tiring but not being next

to her was.

    I only saw her once again.

    And the way I am now is blocking me from letting it all in the way

I was that weekend.  Months, a year later, walking down the street in

Mendocino with my father and brother, I see her again.  In a car with her

friends, hair shorter now, but the same knowing eyes, same penetrating gaze,

and I smile.  It is her. I walk forward, father and brother holding back

behind.  I look, smiling into her eyes.  Silence.  "Still the same,"  I say.

She nods.  And... I walk away with my father and brother.

    And here I sit in front of a keyboard monitor computer in the lab at 

11:45 pm.  And I laugh at myself, head shaking slightly from side to side, 

lopsided grin on my face.  And it hurts inside.

    Time to go to sleep.



--