synesthesiology

We crashed into each other outside of the Museum of Sex and then you hollered at me, so I spent nights with you, my knees and shoulders banging against plaster walls in what I like to think of as the only way you knew to show affection, but an extended exercise in stroking your ego is the more likely story. We would ride the subway for what felt like days. I’d fold myself into the envelope of your arms, and you would trace the nape of my neck with your lips, through my lion’s mane of hair. It is funny the things you remember; I remember the word burgundy and your fitteds, and the bottle of JD in my purse. I remembered your hand sliding down the flat of my stomach and you telling me that you loved the way I touched you. Remember the way we made up elaborate, extravagant stories for our fellow passengers about their ostentatious lives? In the morning when we caught our trains that launched us to what may as well have been separate ends of the universe, with Grand Central the axis on which we turn, I couldn’t help but wonder if we were both someone else on that train, what would our respective stories have been? I hope our storyteller would find a way to make you see the oceans in my eyes, and pull you away from the hustle, but I know no storyteller would do that; no storyteller ever could.  So holler at me if you see me, but don’t say my name.  When your voice slides over me like molasses, it just gets stuck, and I’m tired of pulling your name out of my hair.