To the day, with Love,

(short prose-doodle)

As my index fingers rub along my lashes, I stretch-press my lids down against the top of my cheekbones. Wind through branches. My thoughts wander as decades of muscle memory expertly locate accumulated grains of eye sap and pinch-roll them away. I use my fingernails to scrape out the inside and outside corners where the last remnants tend to settle.

Nana called it sleep—wipe that there sleep outta the corner of your eye, Veach. And if I couldn’t, she would; usually with a licked thumb. In her years, the civil time, a loose eyelash was called an eye-winker, a girls clitoris or vagina (or both, I don’t know for sure) was a hooty-hoo, a penis was referred to as a peetie, and eye sap was sleep, unless Nana was telling me the sandman story, then she just called it sand.

Breath-top warmth is becoming strong enough to taste through the opening. Salmon colored slashes of light reflect off the branches above—the pink of the meat, not the silver-blue-gray of that live, ugly fish. The salmon deepens closer to coral now. Live coral. Dead coral, as I recall, is bone-white.

A knuckle-deep piece of crust catches under my fingernail and a large amount of adjacent residue peels away. I can tell it’s anchored deep and begin slow, careful, precision removal. Wet and slug-like, the tail feels like it tickled throat hairs as the whole thing pulled free. I don’t need to examine it, however, because I know it is big enough to throw back. I place it—tail first—on the center of my tongue. Cool smelling breeze, fresh with the scent of drying foliage.

Knees forced up—blanket around ankles and tucked under my weight—my fingers wobble-wiggle. Between thumb and finger, I recall shape-arches and pristine textures under fingertips or lips that were—then—wholly reliant upon my concentration. Many decisions guided me once, now their memories arouse. My hand falls into place with familiar touch-grip. There is no noticeable difference between distant reality and prior fantasies; they meld as they always do. They look identical behind my eyelids.

Not so soft yet pliant ochre skin clothed in the shadow of a yellow porch light fades to the taste of coppery juices flowing like cough syrup.

The pace across the ridge—the tightness and resistance, slick, wonderful, hides a painful unblemished memory of breathing across unshaven.

Commingles with fabricated incidents—based in someone’s yet to acknowledge rightness—the participation wanes and flashes of snippets of colors-all-of-one-hue dominate.

And I sit up. My morning (it is before noon somewhere, probably closer to Asia or Malaysia) routine must begin. Don’t Go.

—Veach Glines, December 2004