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| pris campbell |  | 1. 14 Months We parked along that long canal into Pearl Harbor. I wore pink. Hot pink. Pink sundress. Pink sandals. Pink scarf around my hair. Pink crepe flowers dotted the lei we'd worked on for weeks, now nestled in the tug's bow as it raced to guide the Genesee inside. The men wore white. White uniforms. White hats. White shoes. Lines of white swept across upper deck and lower, bodies erect, faces forward. It had been fourteen months, four hundred twenty-dive days, ten thousand two-hundred hours since I'd seen him. Now he was home. Home from Vietnam. Home to a brass band. Home to a shimmering lei. Home to this pink opening flower, ready to weep all over his uniform when he touched me. 2. Nevermore Spilt over the lip of Nevermore spat from the mouth of Shiva, he appears on my phone. Himself. Once us. Fellow sailor who abandoned me to rough seas. Skin shed for a new one through GOD's grace, he speaks of reformed moneychangers, red-striped zebras, odd colored leopards. This man, become stranger, talks on but my own words ricochet. My mind travels forty nights into the desert and I shiver, still hear Marley's chains clank over the graves of old lovers. 3. Loose Change It's not like the sonic boom. Not like a pup's whimper, either. It's more like the soft sucking erosion of a riverbank-- gone before you take notice, or like a back turned when you least expect it. It's like the man you want looking for women 20 years younger now, Jimmy Choo shoes dangling from cocksure feet, their show-off breasts peeking naughtily at your own used-up fallen ones. It's knowing you can't ever scoop up the hours like so much loose change, your legs spread wide open again, a flower stuck in your hair, and a sweet sexy man riding you softly until you sigh, 'no more'. | |
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