A half an hour, 45 minutes outside town, the hills begin to lift, and
if you know just where to look, you see the first blue line of
mountains reaching towards the sky. That's where he left the highway,
dipped and swooped through steepening hills, past trees that seemed to
grow taller, deeper green as we climbed. A gravel road following the

It's not as simple as desire, not just a layer, or even two. It's art.

Perhaps it was when I lifted my foot, to untie my shoe, and pants rose
just enough to show the smallest band of smooth and newly-shaven skin,
that we decided on a painting, not a sketch. I saw my secret exposed. I
saw him look. I looked up at his face, tried a small smile.

It was getting dark when I got there, and I'd managed to get off the
wrong exit, too, guessing downtown was where it wasn't, as I always do.
It meant an anxious tour through the dark and empty streets down by the
river, looking for a place to stay, finding nothing until I finally
passed an open space -- park or vacant lot, I couldn't tell and didn't

Halfway across the river, the ferry turns. The gulls, as always, surprised by the boat's movement now wheel and dive, complaining cries as they take up their stations once again. The turn means a breeze from a fresh direction can ruffle hair, feather the hem of the skirt that after all these months I dare to wear so that it dances round my knees.

Maybe what keeps us on our course is fearing how the shock of change will shake the people whom we know.

The fountain that my own fingers recall, nothing like this: Drawn from a pond, a puddle. But, oh, how I felt an ocean of you crashing in. Ocean: warm saltiness of life, thick with potential, humming with energy barely contained, condensed of beating hearts and fluttering gills and lashing tails of a million, of a billion tiny creatures saying: Live, live.