Beware the ides of eucalyptus eyes, and the crunch of hearts dropped beneath the eaves of your indifference.
Kisses dropped on my lips by idle loves, women who would have me but would not cherish me, perhaps. I know nothing of it. Lately lying late in the arms of conversation, mild parties of wine and whimsy, poetry and flimsy excuses to brush against each and every other.
Sleep is brief, waking early to breakfast or to go to the airport, or because the light sifting through the leaves strikes my closed lids and pries them apart, coaxing my pupils to wax like black moons as I rub lingering dreams from my lashes.
Today, two LARGE drip coffees, before 8 am. Only three hours of sleep, and two hours of driving as I bid my friend adieu on his journey to China. My skin, like butter over too much bread, stretched taut over jittery muscles and bones infused now with the tar of too many cigarettes.
Last night, conversation for hours with a strange girl who gazed at me while she spoke. Drinks over an open mike, and a late ride home as she and her friend sifted through books I needed rid of, as if they were the only copies ever printed. As she left the car she leaned toward me, looked at me, waited …
… the car filled with a pregnant hesitation …
… and then she wished me a safe drive to the airport in the morning. And then she was gone. As I drove home, I marvelled that we’re all so disparate, so unknown to each other and fascinating, though each normal in their own way, each perfect and unique and mad like Alice and her chesire cat.
Three hours of sleep on a night following a night of three hours of sleep, and momentarily alert I notice the quiet of 3 am, that even the gulls are still. As we merge onto the freeway at 3:45, I turn to my friend, who had not slept at all, and say, “So, last night was pretty crazy, huh?”
He looks at me, confused. “Wait, you mean tonight?” These hours of the day are ambiguous, secretive creatures, subject to miscalculations and shifts in perspective.
As I get home, the sun has begun to diffuse its light into the fog, and the gulls are screaming.