That Sunny Black Dress

Let me see you in that black dress, legs crossed and hair tossed, sitting under a pink umbrella on a sun shiny summer evening. Let me smell the lotion on your skin, see the shimmer of your hair as you chat with the ladies and sip your sangria. Let me watch you. Let me dream. Let me imagine, for a moment, for a perfect moment, you are mine, and that backyard table is ours, and that sunshine behind the apple blossom beams on our house and our fairytales.

Let me imagine, for a moment longer, that mine is yours, that we are we, that worlds spin about our wishes and fate is governed by our whims. I pull up in the driveway, home from wherever you were not, and see you mingling with friends, chatting with a cocktail dancing between your fingers. Like a servant boy lost in the harem’s quarters, I interrupt for a moment with polite Hellos and apologies for intruding. The ladies smile and sip as birds sing their sunset songs. I come up behind you, squeeze your shoulders, lean forward, kiss your cheek, hear the quiet hum of pleasure as you smile and relax. You look marvelous, I whisper in your ear, and to the gathered soiree of classy ladies I ask for a pardon and dispense farewells, begging, Please don’t keep her from me all night, at which they playfully mock and tease but secretly marvel at such complete devotion.

Let me imagine, a while more, waiting inside for the party to end, laying atop the bedsheets, reading as the screen door slides open and closed and locked. They kept you forever, I joke, and you laugh, passing me for the bathroom, asking about my day and listening to the answer. Let me see you in that black dress, sauntering past, sleepy and sexy with those long tan legs and toes, sighing at the end of another day. I listen as you wash up and tell me the stories of the ladies of the party. You explain that some of them bored you, that some are sweet, that one or two are volunteering for this charity or that charity, that one is overplanning a wedding and two others are overplanning a divorce. Let me see you in that black dress, let me watch it slide to the floor, let me see the white bikini lines on your shoulders, your pale breasts. You pull a nightshirt from the bureau and stand by the bed. I lean over and kiss your tummy, slide a hand up to your ass and inhale the sweetness of your skin as you shift slightly ’cause it tickles. Laughing and squirming, you take my head in your hands, you look down at me smiling, eyes bright in the bedroom light. You kiss me on my forehead and disappear to do all the little things you do before you meet your dreams.

Let me imagine a few minutes later as you climb into bed. Your leg slides up against mine, your head settles into a pillow, your breath is warm on my face. I touch your cheek, you touch my chest, I kiss you, you kiss me, we kiss with gentle lips in the gentle breeze of a spinning fan, in the comfy bed of a passionate home tucked away into a lively corner of an imperfect world. Under soft warm light, your eyes close, your breathing slows, and with your fingers twitching under my chin you sleep beside me as lovingly calm as a child, content and perfect and beautiful and happy.

Let me see you there and imagine, for just a moment, that this is our reality, that this is our life, that this is our world and our universe and our forever.

Then I’ll look at you in that black dress, still sitting in the sun and sipping that sangria, and I’ll thank you for the moment. I’ll go back to my life, alone, without you, and everything will be okay, because in my dreams reality can bend the rules, and you can be a goddess, and a goddess can be mine, and life, for all its unfairness, can always be sunny.

originally posted 7.14.2010