Bought a new façade at Store 93 today.

I’ve only seen about 80 people wearing it,

So I had to get one myself before word got out.

Was only 120 UNibucks and it’s so sexy!

Wish we were allowed persistent ones like the old days, though.

Now, only patrols and regulators have them.

This one is a ten-pacer,

So the transformation from drab grey jumpsuit

To pearlescent cocktail dress and boots

Happens at five paces, but continues for five more paces,

If you dare to look back.

I hope the twenty pacers come down soon.

They’re so stunning! And the resolution!

Got another e-Mind warning today for dwelling.

Can’t stop thinking about the Ancients.

I mean, they had to fight for everything.

So glad those days are over—must’ve been a nightmare.

People even had to find their own jobs.

I wonder why it took so long for people to figure out

That the government means well and just wants to provide for us.

Guess they weren’t so evolved back then.

We are older, somewhat older than today. There you are, loved by life and me and the ocean breeze, hair dancing playfully about, rapt in thought—about a time, or a place—I know not what. Looking altogether like an oracle divining wisdom from the whispers of an errant wind. 

As always, you dazzle in the simplest attire: your sheer white pants make a half-hearted attempt at disguising the lovely shape of your legs. A peach linen top drapes loosely from your shoulders, buttoned just high enough for modesty, but low enough to entice. This has been, and ever will be, your forté: graceful, effortless, understated beauty. Even after years together, you still can’t fathom the immense sway your smile, your line, your touch have over me. How God bestowed so much humility upon such a stunning, radiant being, I’ll never know.

Quietly, I kiss you while you sleep and steal away at dawn for a leisurely Sunday ride. What I've never shared is how lonely the ride out feels, for it runs against my nature to leave you behind. It lingers on my mind the first few miles, until a breath of wildflower wafts across the highway, and I am lost, hopelessly lost—to the hills, to the sea, to the forests and the fields—giggling with delight as I roar across the thundering immediacy of Now. 

The seduction lasts a while, as Mother Nature draws me down this lane or that, over that hill or the next, until something lovely reminds me slowly, unmistakably, of you. And the moment I feel it, I reign in my machine and begin the journey home, driven onward, ever onward, by the thought of your voice, your touch, your lips, your smile. And before you know it, before the morning rays have kissed the flower-boxes gracing our porch, I rumble in on a cloud of dust and a gallop of exhaust up the gravel pathway that leads to our cottage. 

I never tire of that first glimpse of you, tiptoeing about the porch with a watering can, or better yet, pulling up short and leaping off the moment I catch you dozing in the yard. Then, ever so quietly, I pad up to you—lost in delicious slumber, nestled in the palm of a rope hammock—and kiss you gently awake, until your eyes meet mine with that incomparable, immutable smile: a smile that signals, now and forever, that I am home. In those moments, I realize how incredibly rich we are in our humble white abode by the pale blue sea. For long ago, we chose joy over money, and have been awash in Love’s simple grace, her boundless abundance, ever since.

Today’s approach is deliciously different: there you are, trying to contain a smile from behind a book, caught in exquisite repose on a chaise. And beside you, a fresh pitcher of homemade tea, hot off the stove, ice still crackling from the stress of the boil. The sugar is melting and the lemon's seeping fast. I take up the lounge next to you, lean over for a kiss, and know in an instant, that I am precisely where I wish to be in all the universe, amid the sunshine, the flowers, the saline breeze, the swell and retreat of a summer tide, and the never-ending enchantment of you.

Heard a whisper

From above

"Will you venture,

Her, to love?"

Noble mission

Sight unseen

Kind intentions

Soul pristine.

Dared to love you

Heart made glad

What is this--

I've made you sad.

Words ensnare me

Can't defend

Words, they bring us

To an end.

Soul endangered

Mind gone numb

Pain so pure

I've come undone.

Crush of spirit

Bone on brick

Count your losses

In too thick.

Body aching

Heart afire

Watch me wallow

In the mire.

Touch, once welcomed,

Now is spurned

Love, sent packing,

Can't return.

Love runs off

With Joy and Trust

Another Romance

Ground to dust.

She learned before the age of eight

There was no time left for childhood--

Not with the Russians on the move

And the North Koreans working out the Bomb.

Since the Reckoning, she seized upon those moments of calm

That arose, sometimes, between the work.

But every day, they grew shorter, and farther apart,

While the Bible studies grew longer, and more ominous.

One night, after curfew, she woke her brother,

Whispering for him to join her.

She led him down to the clothing locker

Where, quiet as thieves, they struggled into leaden suits

And squeezed into their stifling gas masks.

They lost themselves, and danced with abandon,

Fogging up their face shields with muffled laughter.

Forgetting, for a while, where they were--and what the world had become.

Until a sad thought struck her like an elbow to the head:

She’d never enjoy a first kiss or be asked to the prom.

Breathless and sweaty, she winced back the tears,

Imagining her suit a lovely evening gown, and the mask a gleaming gold tiara.

For an instant, she even managed a faint smile,

Happy that the air inside didn’t smell like rubber anymore. 

The only truth he knows

He courts between two fingers:

A romance, swift and silent,

Before a blue-nailed strike

Erupts across the night

To mark her birth.

Deeply, religiously,

He draws her in,

Past the vanity of wind-swept teeth,

Down the meaty maw,

Where dreams and lies collude.

In his struggle to contain her,

He endures,

Until bulging, blue-faced,

She is loosed upon the moonlight

In a silky, coiled ascent.

And somewhere below,

A flimsy, vapid grin betrays his ignorance

That she has stolen more, ever more,

Than she arrived with,

Leaving nothing in her wake,

Save the lingering, sweet perfume

Of wanton death.