Green

-enjoy-

 

My head was resting on his chest. I could feel it rising and falling with each breath. His heart beat steadily inside his ribs. I wanted to seep through his pores and wrap myself around his heart; to beat with it.

            His shirt held firmly to the pungent smell of my favorite herb and I could feel the vodka still playing softly on my numbing lips. I took a deep breath and burrowed my head deeper into his muscular chest.

            A short breeze blew and I shivered in my boxers. The person that I’d forgotten was resting at my feet wrapped their arms tighter around my legs and I relaxed. Back into his chest. He put his hand on my shoulder; squeezing he wrapped the other around me. I felt warm inside his arms.

            The ivy beneath us rustled with our movements. It was cold and green and thicker than it had been the previous day. Water whimpered down on us through the trees, when all around the world was bawling. The green carpet was slowly creeping up my legs and I shivered. I wanted to be dry. And warm. And invisible.

            Time passed slowly; meandering. Seconds were exchanged for beats and breezes and I got lost. In the ivy and the rain and the smells and touches. Everyone had forgotten us in our green carpeted corner of the world.

            Cars passed yards away, but it felt like lifetimes. Nothing and no one could distract us from our unknown purpose. A drop of water fell on my nose and I tensed. But the strong hands pulled me down towards them, and I relented. It was easier to give in to what we all wanted. Then to fight.

            Soon my breaths and beat were in tune with his and I felt myself melting more. I shook my head in a half hearted attempt to keep above. But it didn’t work. And I didn’t think I wanted it to. As the breezes came and went the pull got stronger. I felt myself falling.

            Beats and breaths and breezes and other things that start with B passed slowly as we lay, each in our own realms, that only briefly converged. Mine consisted of a purgatory-like world, of people and things floating in white air. His? Probably of vodka and cartoon like cathedrals. Girls named Katia and men named Viktor. Living up to his very apparent family tree.

            But then the other one sat up.

            “What? Where am I?” they asked looking around to the wet darkness and green world.

            “You’re here. With me. And him,” a voice from in me responded.

            “Where?” they asked again.

            “Here,” the voice I didn’t think was my own replied simply, as if that one word held everything.

            After absorbing that answer for a minute they said abruptly, “We have to go. Now.”

            “Why?”

            “Because,” was all the other one said before they began destroying our own personal realms with their movements and noise. They spoke, not in low soft whispers, but in loud rash tones that made me cling to his chest and thus my halcyon hallucination. I held on like an addict holds to their last fix. But it didn’t work. They continued to tear and rip and pull me from my happiest state. Until finally…my white world of floating objects slipped away and was replaced by what was really there. Green ivy under a wet tree in the middle of a 2:00a.m. rain shower.

            He and I sat up together as one. We looked around at the world behind our green screen dreams. It was neither beautiful nor comforting. But it was real. I left my tired head back against his still muscular chest and he stroked my short messy locks. Neither wanting to fully left go of what our mind’s eyes created. But soon we did.

            Letting go slowly as we looking softly at each other and stood. Water that had been collecting on my ankles began to slide back down to where we had happily lain. A car’s lights passed quickly over us and we knew. We were here; now. In this world. And we could never go back. A long embrace for him; to feel his heart beating and his chest rising once more. Then a shorter one for the other person.

Then they left. The same way they had gone, they left. Silently and quickly. I stood beneath the whimpering tree for a few breezes. But I knew I couldn’t stay. Without another’s beats and breaths to match my own to I couldn’t be like I had been. So with one last look at the shallow indention our bodies had made in the thick underbrush I walked away. The same direction I had come, but it felt different. It was away from him. From the other one. Towards to existence I had been oh so happy to exchange for a time. But that trial was over. And I had to go.

Though I could still smell the pungent herb now on my clothes and the vodka on my lips. So when I woke in the morning at least I would know this hadn’t been a dream. Or a complete dream.