Fool’s Gold

I cling to the treasure of memory, and the doubloons shine brighter as future fades into past.

Her hair is thick, slightly coarse. It sticks to my fingers just a little when I run my hands through; a soft linen flow, instead of a fine silk. She's utterly unselfconscious, and I'm absolutely enamored.

Her lips never really need colors, and makeup is something she uses out of habit instead of necessity. My favorite times are when she steps from the shower, wrapped in a towel. Her brown and sandy-colored hair is wet to black, and it streaks back along her skull, reminding me of the dancers from Simply Irresistible.

But she's prettier.

The towel drops to the floor, and she's forever caught in a pose as my mind snapshots. She's almost a ballerina, hand outstretched to the mattress, one knee up, one foot grounded, toes flexed, frozen in my mind in the act of climbing into bed.

Waiting for me.

Her skin is bronze and her eyes a deep brown. Her teeth are perfectly white, straight, grinning. She looks back at me looking at her as she climbs and we both fall.

I slide up next to her; earthtones contrast with my stark white. She laughs at the ticklish spot on her neck and the smell of her is more than soap and shampoo and her arms wrap me and want me and hold tighter than I've any right to be held.

That embrace is yesterday and tomorrow and it's every today, even in the arms of another.

A trove of memories like these visit in dreams that sometimes feel more like nightmares. I reach into the horde, searching for and clinging to the good before it became something else.

She and I live our separate lives, but I sometimes walk in shadows of longing, looming shade.