Naked on the Balcony in the Middle of the Night

The cigarette touches my lips as I inhale acrid smoke then let it curl around my head as I exhale into the night air. My thoughts are drifting to you as I watch the moon rise over the alleyway. I wonder if the stray cats are prowling through the overgrown yard across the street and how many of the sparrows they have killed. My head is filling with your face. With your lips. With the outline of your body stretched across my bed.

It's not love. It's something else. Something I can't define and have limited capacity to understand. I could hurt you and you would call me God. I could lay beside you as quiet as the dim sky curled against your side in languishing softness and you would call me lover. I could be running through the streets deep in shadow under the trees screaming for you and you would call me wolf. I could be nothing sitting in the dark like this forever and you could never even realize I was calling for you at all.

In this dark spot near my green plants and slowly dripping waters I am deep in thought caught in the currents of my unsettled mind. I came here to build a place I could be alone. Absolutely. Undiluted. A home built on emotion and a wariness of your gentle graces. But still your lips are somewhere out there and my name may be painted on them. I can not see you smile in all this beauty; this trap I held in my hands in times of desperation. I think I can feel you waiting as confused as I am. My skin still holds the memory of your body, your muscles sliding against mine, your cheek resting against my leg. Will you let this distance close or grow between us?

There is something out there in the dark pulling me to the night. It is kissing my skin with windy fingers whispering my name down on moon beams. I wonder if the neighbors will notice if I slip naked into the night, down the roof to the street below. Maybe I'll come tapping at your window so we can play a game out in the fields tonight. We can run short on breath and fear. We can be something animal, something beyond what these cities are trying to steal from us. We can be wild tumbling through the weeds chasing little animals in the dark. We can fall from trees and roll skin to skin down into the grass, lips locked to lips in a passion only the ocean will understand. We can be something free, something grand, something exciting, something unstoppable...

Then again, maybe I will just go find something to eat and see what's on TV...