ASTERES PLANETAI

* See note below...

by Sam Cooper

In musty ancient rooms, I can only smell your hair. Already I want to kiss you.

Sometimes things align. I want to outline, to map, what brought us here—and can almost do it. I can see the path we took. The meeting, the talking, the talking, the talking, the touches here and there, the looking at each other in the dark. But something else is at play here, some kind of system or maybe really just chaos, chance. This kind of charting is a peculiar astronomy. Wandering stars turn out to not be lost after all, but moving in circles, cycles, dancing until… they aren’t stars at all, but heavenly bodies of a different sort, and they are given names of gods and are fixtures, constants. And sometimes they align.

On our tiny mountain, the views are lush and green. I want to stay there forever, just looking together out over the country that I love and I am trying to show you that I love and hoping that you love in some small way as much as I do.

In my house, my cave, my hideout that has so long been kept dark with curtains drawn and space staked out, and saturated with the noise of electronics and false light, you and I stare at the movie on the screen and each try to touch the other’s hand without seeming to want to touch. I find this adorable. I am nervous, and decide it’s the best kind of nervous. I steal glances at your eyelashes fanning the air every time you blink. I see you smile.

Dinner is comfortable and pleasant. This is in no way boring or disappointing.

We drive. There is magic in driving. A straight line, and conversation that follows anything but. I can sometimes feel you turned towards me, looking at me. Maybe I imagine this. I try to watch the road. My heart is thundering again.

Late at night, in a city I have often considered to be dead after dark, dead really at all times of the day, I realize that the city is not dead but slumbering, maybe sadly, maybe not. We are awake. We are always awake this time of night. The lights along the reflecting pool are moons lighting our path.

Sitting on a bench, in a place dedicated to death, feeling nothing but alive, having circumnavigated the memorial already, now just sitting—so close, we are touching, my right side is warm against you—watching the fountain that looks less like water and more, with its illuminated streams, like liquid platinum, watching a child walk his mom around the edge of the pool, pulling her down every few steps to sit and dip his hand in the water. My chest may explode, my heart is beating so powerfully, so fast. I breathe in the silence we have woven around each other. I know what I want, I know what I need to say. The silence seals my lips. My heart tries to burst its way through as way of opening them.

The lights go out and the fountain stops flowing (it is very late and the memorial is technically closed now) and suddenly I am saying not the right words, not the words I want to say—your warmth next to mine is electricity and falling clouds and I can hardly breathe, much less think—but they are words and I say them and they quiet the hammering in my chest momentarily so I can move, move to where I’ve wanted to be all day. With you. We kiss. It doesn’t matter that the lights have gone out. The aurora behind my eyelids when I am breathing you in, when I realize finally we have broken down the barrier that had no right standing in the first place, is bright and beautiful, more beautiful than any illuminated fountain could ever hope to be.

The rest of the night passes like a dream. We hold hands. We kiss. Your touch is warm ice, calming lightning. Even though when we finally say goodnight, and I leave to drive home grinning like a fool and singing songs to a too-empty passenger seat, and I can hardly remember when I had woken up that morning, it is too soon.

I read your words on the computer screen. My breath catches and my heart leaps for the thousandth time in a day.

When my leg shakes uncontrollably, it is because my nerves are bundled and tangled and coiled like springs, wanting to run, and jump, and climb, and walk the whole city all night. When my body stills, it is because it is content.

When my heart is a hummingbird hovering near my teeth, near the surface of my skin, against your hand, it is because the clock moves too slowly, moves too quickly. It is because your lips are inches from mine, are on mine. Your hands on, in mine. I can feel your pulse surging in your neck, and know that you can feel mine as well.

I sit down to write something, anything, to try and capture these moments. And I find that what I have written is melodramatic, sappy, overblown, and maybe, no…probably, naïve. But I don’t care. I look at the words I have set down and see too much “I” and not enough “we.” These moments were not about me. They were about us. You and me. And it’s only been two days and the second day was great too but I don’t want to write about it for some reason. Some things don’t need to be reported. And that day was only yesterday, and nothing is certain except for your pulse and my pulse and your skin and eyes and my skin and eyes. But I can’t help—as much as I want to help it—feeling uneasy. Nothing is certain. Fuck it. I see all these things, think all these things, but I don’t care. I am smiling. Even now. I am happy. I am happy and somewhere I think you are happy too. Maybe you are smiling with me, at this very moment, and our smile obliterates the miles and miles that separate us, blurs away the doubts that too often echo around in my skull. I’ll see you tomorrow, and tomorrow is too far away.

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*How can I hope to honestly represent one of the most amazing days of my life, especially when Jenna's written about it so eloquently and economically already? Why didn't I name her in this piece? Why can't I just write something journal-y, rather than wrap my personal experiences in a shell of art? Oh well. This is how I operate, I guess.