I did not create this reality, you did; everyone did but surely not me. I am just a passenger. There is no way I would have purposely created THIS for myself. I struggle daily trying to find my place in the world. I envy anyone who is so set in their convictions, their belief and style. They embrace it yet I refuse mine. I live between your reality and mine. The awareness of the matrix. I stare at people and think ′ this is not real’ . Yet what is real? Is it real because in experiencing this reality I can touch, hear, smell, and see? What about my intuition? My third-eye? Doesn’t it warrant some acknowledgement? To feel something outside the perameters of the physical is considered taboo. It is said nothing is to be trusted if you cannot confirm with your phyical senses. When we utlize our intuition it is marked with scorn since it is beyond the capabilty to measure. The only way to prove an intuition to be true is to be measured by our physical senses. If I have a feeling that someone is cheating- the feeling does not make it true- but the physical senses captures the evidence to determine to truth.

When did this become acceptable? Who decided it was a good idea to discredit the primative or shall I say the sophisticated part of you? Why along the way did we decide to neglect that part of ourselves? Some would argue the human race has evolved, gained intelligence thus creating a complex world. The material world has now become our God. We only believe what we can witness through our five senses. The existence of a divine being is taught as an outside source that only a few have the privledge to know. What about the divine being inside of you? That voice inside offering guidance is silenced by the conditioning of society. I am here in this world that is rumored it was created by some unknown mysterious force. The design may not be mine, but I can follow the clues to my true existence. The clues are tailored to the individual. I am on to something.......... I can sense it.

It would be one of those Southern nights that are dipped in humidity. There would be a sliver of moon’s gold amidst a sprinkling of stars, the moonlight so faint that we cannot see features, but only our shadow-silhouettes through it’s champagne light. The night would be warm enough, but moist, so that chill-bumps might dimple your skin where the breeze finds it. Or maybe it’s not the breeze dimpling your skin, but trepidation, the surprise of finding that bare skin alone in the night beside a strange boy. Maybe those bumps are because I am right here, so close that you can hear me breathe, the only other sounds the anxious cries from indiscernible crickets, and the rustle of black water stirred by four bare feet dipped overside of the dock. You might wish for a voice to break the silence, a single word to blanket the dark with security, just one word to relieve the tension that somehow hangs thicker on the air than the humidity. It is late, and we are very alone.

What if I found your hand in the dark? What if you were unsure, but didn’t pull away?What if, without that wished for word, I silently asked for you? What if our fingers locked in a lover’s grip, a grip that told you, “It is ok.” What if my ragged voice then whispered that the night is good, and the moonlight rippling the water, and you here beside me?

And what if a fish tickled your foot so that you jumped? What if I threw my arms around you, protectively? What if there was nervous laughter between us as we felt the warmth radiating from each other’s bodies? What if I touched those chill-bumps on your arms, rubbing my hands across them; gently, sweetly, like your mother rubbed them when you were a child and she thought you were sleeping? Your skin would be cool on my fingertips and in my palms, soft, so that I would not stop rubbing, so that I could not stop rubbing. And of course it would be dark; so dark that I could not see that at some point your eyes had closed.

Suppose I leaned in to kiss, pausing my lips next to yours, wondering, feeling your breath, pulling that breath inside before parting my lips to taste. You might even kiss me back, your pulse pounding your ears and drowning out those crickets.

And what if I laid you down under the swirling stars as the dock rocked and the waves lapped the sand? What if my hands explored you, and my lips followed... and what if you surrendered to them?

What then?

If you surrendered?

Could you love me then?

I miss you in the space between

my heartbeats fed by yesterday’s love

My hopes of you take flight in dreams

as lonely as a crimson dove

Awaken not a sleeping wish

as honesty swims in eventide

A long-known soul, a timeline miss

a promise bled where chances bide

I miss you in the space between

perpetual paths our starlight knew

My hopes of you take flight in dreams

where you tell me, “I miss you, too.”

Above the fireplace hang prints by Howard Pyle, N.C. and Andrew Wyeth. The Flying Dutchman defiantly leaning on deck. A marooned pirate between adventures. A gentleman standing alone in a simple bedroom.

Massive burlap bags of coffee beans from Brazil, Columbia, and Costa Rica are stacked in the roasting room to my right. There’s a steady stream of people all morning. The tables fill, half of people with agendas or meetings or romances to nourish, the other half here for the coffee and wifi, ear buds and head sets isolating them just enough to be somewhere else.

I was tapping away on my MacBook, no different than anyone else in a crowded cafe.

Never like dripped coffee. I became a coffee lover, not after graduating from a generic chain using Italian numbers for coffees, but from regular visits to small cafés in Lisbon (spent five years there), where ordering coffee was vital and a bit complicated.

Most expats wanted to blend in as much as possible. As important as learning Portuguese was knowing how to correctly order coffee.

Um galão escuro was the morning drink – a tall glass of steamed milk rich with fat and two shots of espresso. Tasted like chocolate. Mid-morning we took breaks and went for um bica or um café duplo, then a cappucino after lunch, then mid-afternoon another break for um pingado, and either another bica or cappucino after dinner. Coffee was how you functioned 18 hours a day.

You never ordered a cappuccino before lunch or a galão after noon. And you were regarded better if you began with Eu gostaria (I would like) instead of the mildly rude Eu quero (I want). The ritual of ordering was also about manners.

Yesterday I found that photograph of Vanessa. My calendar shows we met twenty-five years ago, in a Lisbon café, two expats from different countries in an old city bustling its way into modernity.

On the back of the photograph was her family’s address in Paris, something I hadn’t noticed until I was digging through old photographs trying to find the picture of her with the broad-rimmed beige hat and those eyes that used to capture me.

That morning she turned around after ordering. “You are American, no?”

“Yes, I am,” I stammered. I had seen her before breeze by me on the streets. Friends had said I would inevitably meet this woman in from Paris, and there we were.

It started with coffee that morning, two strangers at first, eyeing each other with equal parts suspicion and attraction, ordering galãos in our best version of Portuguese.

There were other pictures – of Vanessa and I at dinners and beaches and castles and cliffs – but the picture of her with that small smile and beige hat in a garden always got me.

I can’t remember all of the details of what wrong, then right and then wrong again. Only that I had left things badly, recklessly confident that there would always be another chance to make things right again.

I stared at the blank page on my screen. Tipped back the espresso and tuned out the music and chatter from the other tables and began tapping.

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