King of Her Desire

56

She didn't say a word.

After that lioness roar, she just walked beside me in complete silence while I stumbled around in the desert by Gerri's house, tripping over rocks and sticks and divots in the dirt I couldn't see through the tears in my eyes.

I didn't know where the hell I was going. But she just followed me down all these twisty little footpaths and 'way up this slope where I finally sat down on a big flat rock to stare out at the city.

And once I'd settled down, knees to chest, she sat down behind me and still didn't say a word.

Just put her arms around my shoulders and her head down on my back. Breathing with me. Like whatever I wanted she was there for it.

Felt weird at first. Cause I'm the "do-er." The fixer—you know this. I make things happen or stop things from happening. I feel like a failure when I can't. Definitely felt like one that day.

But you know...she showed me that not doing anything was pretty damned powerful, too. Giving up power...letting somebody be, feel, do whatever—that's deep. That's respect, too. Yeah, there's times when you need to jump in, but even then, maybe if you wait a little while...

I don't know. But in that space she gave me, I went to all kinds of places in my head. Like my mind was working things out, you know? Calling up pertinent information, by just wandering that way.

For a while, I was a little kid again. Sitting under a raggedy tarp in some tent camp somewhere wondering what it was like to live in a real house. And have a big old meal and then sit down in front of a TV or play video games or something. Or go out and hang with other kids on the block. All of us safe, happy, carefree...

Back then staring out at the city was pretty dope, too. Just chillin' for a bit. Usually I'd spent the day frying in the blast furnace heat, stopping by places that'd give us frozen bottles of water and a sandwich or something. Trying to eat real slow just to be inside or in the shade longer.

But when you're exhausted and haven't bathed in a minute and don't know what might happen where you're crashing that night or where you're going to crash the next night, you can only enjoy natural beauty so much. Cause you didn't choose to be sitting there surrounded by it.

But that day, I could choose to go anywhere I wanted. Have anything I wanted. And I think my mind took me back to those scary days to help me start working out whether to give up this new, easy life or not...

But I just kept on breathing with her. That's all I wanted. Her weight on my back felt different than the troubles I usually carried. It was comforting.

But then she sort of nuzzled me on the spine like she might be thinking of getting up to go back, so I reached around to hold her there a little longer. She was all silk and satin. Her hair and skin, I mean. Soft. Warm.

I turned around to smile about that. And we sort of butted heads. Stared into each other's eyes.

And then the girl leaned in and...I don't even have words for that kiss. It wasn't one of those big old "Come get you some" kisses that mean it's time to throw down.

This kiss was from somewhere beyond her body. Which makes no sense, I know. But I think it came from all that stuff I felt in her from the minute we met down in Mexico. That deep, "all-knowing, all-seeing" thing that I'd honored and kept my hands off of back on the beach.