Labyrinth

Dawn is painting crimson on the fingers and the faces of the thunderheads that roil overhead. I rush past the dry brush on the outskirts of Phoenix, every leaf is wide open to the giant pelting wet scattered gifts of life that will slake the thirst of unseen tortoises, iguanas, ants, and birds.

I leave the roar of the highway as soon as I can, determined to cross the river where the pace of life is slower. I want to contemplate the fact that this mud flat was once a river so large that it led early explorers to think that the land we have now divided into Baja California, Mexico and American California was an island. An island inhabited by lesbians, BTW, but that is another story…

I greedily inhale the biting herbal smell of ozone mixed with dry brush and it triggers my desire to be with you, to hold you and kiss you and stroke your face. I want to bury my nose in your collar and feel your cool white linen shirt against my cheek. I want to take your tang like a shot of liquor, “Yeah, gimme a hit of ozone and dust with a butch back." I feel my desire localize. I feel you across the miles.

The spinning of the wheels is an hypnotic remedy for my want, each bump in the road signals, like a clock striking the hour, the passage of an interval of time. Like the marks that indicate minutes on a clock face, telephone poles tick by one at a time, fence posts point out tenths of seconds, and the white lines are the nanoseconds between us. Adventuress I, I suss out the clues to your whereabouts, for that is my destination. Falling upon the yellow line, I cleverly follow it as if it is a thread in the labyrinth of desert always leading me homeward.

The peaks rise around me, narrowing the distance between us, pushing me, if I stay my final course, to your arms, your touch, your love. I can smell you now, one molecule in a hundred billion delivered by jet stream to my receptors. Now the way is clear and in my mind I see you in the yard with your arms and heart wide open.

Mmmm…let’s have a special intimate supper and celebrate tonite!!