Expansion Ex. 9-23-10 Week 7

A single pair of hands gone metronome directs a smattering of primaries. Reds, blues, and yellows tuned to a surgical precision. The brass quakes and wheezes in the sweltering heat, etched into the matted grass canvas wrapped in barbed wire. Lost in their drone, the brick simmers against my shoulders. Their footfalls thumping my chest, I watch as they watch me, wondering what I'm doing. Understand them and their guttural chorus? No. I'm thinking of you, remembering your flat above the grocery on that London street that I'll never see again. You, creeping down the back stairs for chocolate and cigarettes in bare feet and the midnight of my t-shirt. I smiled at your fascination with America, the land of the free and grease wrapped in wax paper underneath the buzzing of that cracked halo. I remember stumbling up those very steps, heavy with Newcastle, your cricket bat in my hand. The haft worn slim and wrapped in orange electrical tape. Your heels clicking behind me, leaving swatches of grass along the baseboard. Your fingers sunk into the small of my back, guiding my rubber knees up to the landing. I told you that you sounded like Julie Andrews and asked you if you fancied a spot 'o tea. You kissed me, labeled me drunk, and loosed the steam, emerging thirty minutes later with my love for you nailed down alongside those aching wooden boards. I wonder sometimes, if it's still there, rising with the heat on those soaked February mornings, warm against the husband and wife who quiver, lost in their eyelids, in the fish-eye lens twilight.