The Dallas Dark

               Pulled from the warmth of her bed by a responsibility I couldn't give a damn about, I dress in the darkness trying not to wake her.  The drinks endured the night before ensure her slumber more so than my stumbling attempt at stealth.  I look upon her soft snowy skin and feral hair for what might be the last time.  After today, we’ll be separated by thousands of miles and maybe even a lifetime lived and ended, before we cycle back to each other in this cosmic game of chance, if ever we are to meet again at all. 

                Logic says we should never have met to begin with, here in this place which is neither of our homes but just another waypoint on a flat and linear projection that is existence.  In a few short hours we’ll be shooting off into the atmosphere in opposing directions heading for parallel coasts to those significants pensively waiting our return to the familiar. But even in a local population in the millions, and weighted against souls numbering in the billions, we found each other.  Despite commitment and obligation we were drawn together as if by magnetic pull.  I don’t search for comfort but rather it finds me in the knowledge that this could not be hidden from, nor could we ignore this force of nature, this compulsion for connection.  The days before and the days to follow may be owned by others, but last night was ours.  Last night we joined under the darkened sky with a butter colored moon as witness.  

                I open her door to leave letting in the warm, white wash of light from the hallway.  Her eyes open briefly.  She looks at me.  I look at her.  Her lips curl into a bittersweet smile with a depth of understanding that words could never know.  Goodbye could find no purchase here, so words were left to wither in silence.  She holds my gaze as long as she can before she is consumed once more by exhaustion.   Her eyes flutter like beating wings as she strains to keep them open before they finally come to rest.  I steal one last moment to watch her disappear back into her own dreamscape because I know the next time she returns back to consciousness and opens those eyes, I’ll be miles high above the earth with the jet streams at my back.

                 Letting go, the door closes behind me like a whisper but severs like a blade.  I battle the urge to look back knowing the only path is forward as I thread my way through the empty halls of her hotel jumping in the first open box to shoot me down forty stories back to earth.

                I bounce out into the cold morning air.  It sobers me as the sun still slumbers.  It’s too cold for it to rise and disperse the Dallas dark.  I pull out a cigarette and seek shelter behind a wall chasing the dancing flame of my lighter until I get that smoke good and cherry.  Disoriented, I trek my way back to my own hotel through the deserted streets of this foreign city.  The only sound being the hollowness of my own footsteps echoing off the surrounding concrete encasing me, like a twisted artist’s idea of a Gothic snow globe where it rains upon me gray instead of white.

                I don’t really know the way so I put my faith in satellites above to guide me through the gloomy pre-dusk haze.  My mouth is dry as summer dirt and each drag I take of the cigarette in my hand strips away those last lingering molecules of moisture hiding within my gums.  Still, the warmth and flow of smoke comforts me in my loneliness, and the chemicals sate my wounded soul and grant adhesive to my broken heart.  I ponder how long she’ll remember me.  Whether she’ll fight to keep me in her memory or let time simply strip me from the registry.  I touch the band on my left hand, reminding myself that there is only so much of her that I can keep.

                There are a few twists and turns before my bearings return and instruct me to cut a path through a desolate, pocked marked lot where the lights of my hotel can finally be seen.  It’s like a beacon shining out to me, its name radiating red throughout the darkened sky, begging to be observed.  Behind me the sun begins to flirt with the night, showing just a bit of skin on the horizon.  Yet all I want it to do is sink again, reversing all of this.  Footsteps moving backwards from where they came, leading me back up through the front door of her hotel, stepping back onto the gold and mirrored elevator and ascending up to her floor, back in through her door.  My clothes stripping free of me and falling back onto the ground, again sliding gently into her bed with my body in its rightful place, encapsulating her with my warm flesh.  To be again magnetic, pulled together nerve ending to nerve ending, our breath finding the same rhythm, as we melt together beneath those soft, borrowed sheets.  

                Time moves forward though, propelling me back into my own hollow.  A decaying room in a defunct tower, where my bags are packed and waiting for me, like a promise of home nagging to be kept.  For the very first time my key card gives me no trouble as I slide it into the reader.  The lock pops open with shotgun force and though I know it’s inanimate, its mockery feels all too real.  The door closes behind me, sealing me in with the stale, uncirculated air and I just stand there in the darkness for a few passing moments trying to reconcile this heavy feeling of loss.  I recall the neon cloud of last night, the drinks, the laughter, the dancing, and feeling reawakened like shaking away pins and needles from a sleeping limb.  I think about her.  I think about those lush lips and careless hair, the intelligent luminescence glowing in her eyes, and the way her skin felt pressed against mine.  I smell her sent coming out of my pores, wafting off of my clothes, and with my eyes closed it feels like she’s with me… but she’s not.

                 I open the curtains to find the sun in bloom, yet somehow the city seems darker underneath its rays and somehow I feel colder than I did without shelter.  Again alone in the Dallas Dark.