Peace, Love, and I'll have another beer, dear....

She Barbie-doll walks across the floor, Cinderella shoes clacking on the floor, Rhinestone Cowboys on her fingers, and smiles with painted lips and glow in the dark teeth. He's right behind her, fingertips on the small of her back, swishing this way, and her way. They run a tab and dance the night away...An Arthur Murray re-run. They're in love...

Just ask them, they'll tell you....

He straddles the barstool and scuffs his pointed shoes on the floors while she giggles and swirls and twirls around him....eyes flitting in disco circles to see if anyone is watching. The show gets better with an audience. They're in love...

Just ask them, they'll show you....

She caresses her glass, swishes the cheap shot in lazy waves, and then eyes it like an Owl on a telephone pole. One determined Gulp and she's got hair on her chest. Her left hand travels and she accidently touches her neighbor.

She's looking for Love....

He nudges her, and she falls....head over heels...for him...and onto the floor...

I swing my legs Pippi Longstocking style, balancing, I hope...
Just high enough and brave enough not to ever go there.

I'll have another beer, dear...


And if it's all the same to you,
I'll keep believing in peace and Love...

One upon a time there was a place called Peace....

The sheets weren't sandy the first night. They were crisp and clean and not yet damp from the salt air and the mist machines just outside our door. The towels were Motel white and folded like starched flamingos walking the wire, not yet heaped on the floor, dumplin's in a pile. And we laughed....


On the 7th night I cried. And we clinked. And counted our change. And decided we could never go home.

So we stayed one more night.
One more sunrise.
One more round of tides....
And laughed....



Kimbies won a bucket of Domestics at Beer Bingo
and Skinny won a bucket of Choice....
We saddled our boogie boards and rode naked in the waves....
Each new wave, the Mother of all Waves, yankin' down our britches and unlacing our ties....
We fell...
In the waves, on the deck, over the sprinklers, out of chairs, up the stairs, and in love.
We danced...
Barefooted and bikini bottomed, in gypsy gowns to the ground, and in cowboy boots. With friends and with strangers. All by ourselves.



This morning, I leaned over the deck railing, toes to the edge, and blew her kisses. Thanked her. Wayward child at the train station. She knows I'll be back. And no matter what happens between now and then, when she sees me, she'll scoop me up in her beer foam arms and rock me back to peace........



"In the End, Peace Wins...."

"Thank you, Ocean".....

The long hot hippie summer.....

Plunk! It's almost daybreak and I toss the disco light into the lazy round river. The colors "pink on one", "green on three", "blue on two" play imaginary twister on the vinyl bottom. I'm sure the neighbors won't mind if I crank a little Rollin' Stones to greet the day.
.

It's pool party week-end..... Three Saturdays and three Sundays left before we run away to the beach. Three week-ends to fill with countdowns and count~me~in's and "don't count the beers". I reach over and nudge the yellow duck over the river's edge. Free, she floats away immediately, happy to be at home again....Tomorrow she'll be the gala host of the party.....toting watermelon slices and Michelobs.... Today, she'll just float.... a vinyl mermaid
basking in the sun....
.

It's summertime again.... towels are draped over the deck, damp from the evening dew, lazy and stretched, waiting to be kissed dry by the Friday sun. Georgia runs in crazy round-de-rounds, circle eights around the pool and the Make believe Ming Tree. I clink my coffee cup and smile....
.

Fridays are for dancin'.....
.

And summer's are for love.....

When Pixies Party.....

Sometimes, Sunday's are perfect. The sun rises and smiles, hovers low in the sky, a wild helium balloon in swirls of pink and red....The oak trees dance, dripping in silver jewels, whistling in the wind. Yup, sometimes Sunday's are perfect.

This one was.....

And so we danced at the river.....

Ballet, Bellies, and Disco in the Kitchen. We belted out Ray, crooned to Janis, and swooned to Johnny Cash. We clinked! Tinked! and tattle~telled! We traipsed barefoot through the crunchy, "Oh My god, is that poisen ivey?" underbrush and went exploring. We barbequed ribs and ribs and ribs and ribs, and feasted on tons of southern love.

We cinched the circle in a little tighter....

Feel the love.....

Happy "It's not my Birthday" birthday Kimbies, Don, and Dale!

"Boy~O, Boy~O, Boy~O!"

I'm fidgeting. Thinking of maybe biting my nails again. Kicking up cathair. I did 3 tummy crunches and then hung the clothes up on the night~time line. Turned on the babbly blah~blah~blah~babbly TV.....and smoked another cigarette. Checked the mail. Thumbed through it all and pitched it into the overflowing garbage can. Grabbed a black bag and went out on the deck, chopped the night blooming jasmine back into a crewcut.... and drenched the neighborhood in white perfume. Checked my emails. Checked the phone for voice mail, text messages. Checked to make sure I get bars in the living room, the kitchen. Checked to make sure the charger was working. And now I'm fidgeting. Again.

Hours to go. Maybe days. "Anytime" he said. "Rest up" he told her. I watch the clock.

Waiting on Baby Boy Love. Four weeks early and "anytime" he said....

Traffic

I left the office early. Mad Monday rain slamming the pavement. My little red toyota fogging up instantly....contacts doing the same. I grimaced, just a little, smiled a little more. Beating the clock.....

One more light to go and I'm suddenly the hump in a caterpillers back.....a little red lego in the spine of a plastic snake.....parked on a four line highway. Steam spiraled from the pavement, and I air drummed Smoke on the Water with my right hand, twirled my golden by-the-grace-of-a-bottle-in-mid-winter locks with my left hand. Cracked the window. It was gettin' steamy in there.

If I hadn't of left the office early, I would have never seen them. Across one more north lane, the suicide lane, and two south lanes....

They were jaunting at a good little pace. I could almost hear his green Converse sneakers slapping the puddles. Splash! And she'd go ouch! And they'd laugh. She stopped on a dime, and for a few long legged steps he didn't notice. I watched as she fished a cigarette pack out of her back pocket and struggled in the wet wind to light it. Her hair playing Chicken with the struggling flame. I imagine it was the silence of her echoed footsteps that stopped him. And he spun. Backtracked, caught up to her on the sidewalk, face to face now, and cupped his hands, hiding her little flame from the wind, the rain, the roar of southbound traffic. And then he stopped.

Moved his hands onto her cheeks. Kissed her hard, there on the sidewalk. She dropped the cigarette, a wet tobacco boat set free, drifting slow and muddied, in the southbound lane. The light turned green for the third time, and I shifted gears....Watched them in my five o'clock rearview mirror....not moving.....kissing.....

And I remembered....

Them's fightin' words....

I gave up fussin' and fightin' a long time ago... my last voluntary hoo~hah left me hidin' in the dog house, literally. Thank God I'm skinny. There were cuss words and accusations. One ice cold beer propelling it's liquid soul across the room. Splash! Right on target. "Now, I'm in your face" were the last words I remember dripping from his chin. I ran......

That was over twenty years ago.

I don't like noise or commotion. Except for Led Zepplin. I've lived through a few world wars in the living room, the street, in nightmares come true, and I've survived. Long enough to choose peace. I've never raised my right hand and volunteered again, but I've been there, in the middle of mahem, begging, pleading....waiting.... I remember, recite, the words my Father taught me "wage your battles well"....and whisper them over and over again, worry beads under my breath, when anger show's it's yellow face.....

I'm a chicken, actually.

Fightin' frightens me. Things are said that can never ever be erased. Faces are made, expressions frozen forever like Superman, waiting for just the right moment to come flashing back.....haunted deja vue. Doors are slammed. And sometimes windows break.......

I need the beach......
And a podium....

Peace~love..........

Cupid Ain't Stupid, that's for sure.....

It's in the air. I know I'm holiday hoppin' here, but I mean to. I want to jump from one "feel~good" to the next, and nope, I'm not racing through 'em... I'm racin' to 'em! It's kind of like getting a good seat on the sidewalk for the next parade, you gotta get there early.....

So here it is, St. Valentines Day, parked right around the corner. Pretty soon I'll have to trip over giant red hearts in the grocery store just to buy beer. Helium balloons the size of space ships will be hovering overhead, their bobbing ribbons tickling my hair while I shop for macaroni and cheese. The jewelry stores will all get together and come up with some new" have-to-have": a ring, a chain, a bracelet, that will brand any woman without one on the morning after as ......well.....valentineless, or soul mate to a poor man. A million red roses will be sacrificed for the moment, bundled and jumbled and sold for a fortune. The writers at Hallmarkwill collapse from exhaustion, worn out from feeling the love and padding their pockets.

Here in Hippie Holiday Land, we do it a little bit different.

"Patty cake
Patty cake
Baker's man,
Role em' and a dole em
and throw 'em in a pan".....

Ta! Dah! Love beads everywhere!

You wanna feel the love? Email your postal and I'll bop a string in the mail to you! Yeah, Cupid Ain't Stupid, she's got blonde hair and wears hand me down jeans....





Here's mine, almost twenty years later.....We started with three little beads, peace, love and hope, and they grew.... The colors and stories have changed, but I still feel the love.....remember the night we sat at the table a lifetime ago, Skinny and I, making love beads, saving the world......

Writing on the walls....

I woke up to sunshine and followed the trail of abandoned combat boots, clothes, helium balloons asleep on the floor, to the kitchen.....to the first New Day of the New Year. Confetti is still fallin' from my hair, joining the cat hair in a midair ballet. It's nice. This promise of tomorrow. I open the windows and smile at the unkempt yard and the free newspapers piled at the edge of the driveway. I clink! my coffeecup to the blue sky and throw a kiss... "Good-bye friend" I whisper to the old year, the tried and tired and true year. I'm not being unfaithful, it's just time to move on...

I run my fingers over the broken blue tile and Michelob caps, the fresh sandy grout.....and smile again. My Dear John letter to 2007 and love letter to 2008 etched forever on the walls of this old house. Let there be peace.......

Kiss the sky at Midnight

New Years....

I’ve tried it everyway. As a child, we hooped and hollered, twirled Nana’s noisemakers in the air! Teetered on the top of the bamboo barstools, feet dangling, arms flailing Wheeeeeee! It’s New Years! Along the way, we started sneaking down to the basement, having James whip us up Suicides….coke and rum and vodka…. Gag me with a spoon! But it left us breathless, and sitting in circles, watching midnight grab the sky, singing…Sha Na..Na…Na…Na… Hey…Hey. …Hey…
holding hands, and sometimes upchucking heads. I ache now. We are not all here now. Those were the New Years we should have hugged each other harder and left the toilets to their own.

And then we were legally “grown up”. And we hung from Balconies and French kissed at midnight. It was still good. Even the year Greg Fishowitz overdosed and sentenced himself to a life pacing in an antiseptic aquarium plugged into IV’s for eternity. It was still going to be a good year. That was the year Christian came out of the closet, called off his engagement to Juliet, and rocked his parent’s world. We applauded him. The year that Kimbies got suspended for smoking in the bathroom and the year that my boyfriend, in a death defying act of jealousy , flipped the camaro upside down and I LIVED! It’s all good.

And then we were on our own, and dateless, and all piled up in a “too expensive” “too cramped for comfort” apartment and “What the hell?” they were having a Champagne and Caviar Party at the clubhouse…… So we tooled our size six fannies over and swallowed fish eggs and pink bubbles and left with the first three cars that fled the scene….

And we married our rides….. (Some of us for better or for worse, one of us just for the ride)

Time flies when you’re having a good time, and we must have because it’s a blur that I really don’t remember…. And suddenly….

Its another life and
I’m at the airport and I’m watching as my soldier lumbers down the ramp and it’s late, far too late to bring in the New Year, and I’m thrilled….
He’s alive and He’s home and I’m in love and jet lag is an urban myth….
We set the clocks back four and a half hours and embrace the New Year just before the sun comes up. On our own make-believe time.

Years pass.

They bring their blessings and their curses and we survive it all.

I’ve cheered New Years and blessed it out. I’ve welcomed the New and buried, literally, the old. Dug mammoth holes in the flower beds and put the crap to rest. . I’ve burned it. And run out into the street and tossed it’s ugly karma to the sky…ashes floating aimlessly, landing on the curbs. I’ve kissed the sky and wished on stars, I’ve gone to bed……

Two years ago, we started this Resolution thing again…. The time had come. A million things to resolve to, to amend to, to agree to, to give in to. But we picked only three. Kimbies and Butch and I. We must have known then. WE CHOSE PEACE. WE WANTED PEACE. And, oh yeah, they would get a dog and I would get a boyfriend. We just sort of threw that in. We just wanted peace.

“Sometimes you get what you want, sometimes if you try, you get what you need” MJ and the Rolling Stones.

On New Years Eve, we made reservations. Resolutions. Wore hand me down dresses pinched a little here and a little there to fit just so. Kimbies was mannequin beautiful in her hippie bandana with her priceless husband at her side. We cheered. We cried. We danced with strangers. Had exactly one too many drinks. We hugged. We all held hands at some point and fell to our knees on the dirty little floor and thanked God for the noise of rock and roll, and the healing, and the Angels that brought us there. At midnight, we turned and kissed.

I’m so glad even resolutions give you second chances.

I’m doing it all over again this year. And this one is a keeper.

Peace.

Let there be peace.....

I've watched the mailbox for days. I knew it was coming. Everynight I've emptied the leaning, rusting, box at the end of the driveway, thumbed through bills, and bills, and bills, and "why don't you buy me's?", waiting on this.....

The Christmas card from the baby with the old soul....



One World
One Word
Peace.....

It came today....

May the circle be unbroken...

"What's love got to do with it?"

Chey got roses today. A mammoth, gaudy, had to be hauled to the office in a van because they wouldn't fit in a VW, bouquet of roses. I love roses. But not like this. I like rambling wild roses spider crawling up the fence like a pink blackberry bush gone mad. I like seven sisters, passed from house to house and from generation to generation. I like my roses. Thorny and knotty, accidently beautiful, and free....

She didn't show me the card or read me the words and she didn't have to. As the long stemmed beauties dipped over the counter, babies breath stretching, reaching, rising....the bouquet spoke for itself. The fifty dollar apology. The show everybody "I'm the man" button. The secret admirer out of the box. The loud mouth.

I'll stick to wildflowers, thank you....
and words.....
just say the words....

Peace~love

Yes, Virginia......

I started. Don’t say a word. I know it’s early, but it just felt right. I plugged my little vintage fireplace in, with the crackling snapping tinsel twirling on a shish-ka-bob skewer, and hauled the tree onto the porch…..and then....Ta! Dah! Years of mardis gras beads dangle from her fronds, and tethered there, like winter wind chimes….our ornaments…..plaster molds of little hands, kindergarten pictures in macaroni frames, my Mama’s glass church…..ballet slippers, an American flag from Desert Storm, a slice from the trunk of my very ever first Christmas tree….coasters from the corner bar…the cork from "that" bottle of pink champagne...

It felt like Christmas today, so I stayed in my pajamas and sock feet and blasted CD’s and smiled. I emptied the Ho!Ho! Closet onto the hall floor and giggled. I wrapped and wrapped and wrapped. Laughing out loud in my empty house. The tradition continues, and like love, it grows…..

Pass the trash….

Shopping in my cupboards, my closets, my kitchen garbage can……

Babies, like lovers.....

Arrive when you least expect them. I'm gonna be Mimi again. A little sooner than we thought, we're gonna be blessed with toothless grins and sleepless nights, first words, first falls, first "blow me a kiss"es..... meant-to-be's......

And so....Friday night we did the Drano test. Yup, made the midnight run to 7-11, "Nope, they don't have it" "O.K., try Walgreens, they're open 24-7" "Ok, they've got it...gel or foam?" "Hold on, it's been a long time, lemme look it up...." "Crystals, it's gotta be crystals" "Arrrrggggh....they don't have it. Are you sure it's gotta be crystals? " "Yep, you're half way to Walmart, keep driving"......

One thirty A.M.... And we're standing barefoot in the driveway, mixing chemicals and karma.....watching..... when....

KABOOM!

It's a boy!

If they don't believe me, I'll do the pencil test.....

Red Velvet Cake...

“Have you ever been in love before?” he asked me, knowing full well, I was old….

And so I answered him,
With the tell-tale truth…
“yes….
Once….
A very long time ago,
And forever”

We were sitting at the leather chair,
Me curled up, winter style , wrapped in the arms
And cushions.

Him, perched,
Visitor-like,
On the ottoman….
Blue eyes Morse coding…

“I wanna be him” he said….
“Who?” I whispered at the walls,
Twirling my hair in tiny spirals….

“Him. The one you’ve loved forever”

And I gave him that. That free for all, that tumbling, take-me-there.

But I believe In addendums…
So I hope he doesn’t think I wasn’t telling the truth,

I just changed my mind….

Ice packs and Rock and Roll

Just so you guys know.....You rock! Tomorrow the nuts and bolts and plates and screws go in, and I could let this day go unheralded, but wanted you to know, if I'm not around much, I'm piled in the bed with ice packs, Rolling Stones, and drug induced dreams. And if I climb out of bed, and wander around, leaving graffiti on your walls, ummmm, it's probably drug induced. Forgive me!

Thanks everybody for the cheers! clinks! tinks! scribblings on the cast! Whooo~hoooo I can't wait to dance again!

FYI:

My swollen calf is a helluva lot more shapely than my skinny one!

Sometimes you meet the most interesting people when you sit still and listen...

The Doctors are handsome and young and I grew up listening to Mrs. Robinson...

I don't talk in my sleep, so I hope I don't babble under anesthesia....

I can't wait to drive again, Jonah's chevy is ghetto upped and I can't see out the windows!

You have no control over what people write on your cast....

Peace~love to all, catch you when I'm dancin'......

Until then, clink ya, tink ya, love ya!

Whatsa matta whichyou boy?

I sat with the squatters. The elbow boys. The ones who watch from their dark corners, five o'clock shadows and tall boys resting in their hands. It was creepy. Lonely.

From my favorite padded black bar stool, where my fanny hardly ever rests, I became one of them. The Friday night parade marched by, "How to do? How are you?" Kisses on the cheeks. Leaning in for hugs. But it was different. Tethered to the stool, crutches glaring out in the dark, I couldn't jump in for Jack Flash, first one on the dance floor, and my eyes searched the crowd for who would take my place. The dance floor was empty on the count of four, eight, nine, ten... then finally I could breathe again. I smiled. Clinked!

I noticed how very smokey it is when you sit very very still, bodies swirling around you, kicking up the dust and cigarette haze like cat hair everywhere. I studied the floor and for the first time, saw cocktail stirrers everywhere, like a game of pick-up-sticks abandoned mid-sentence for a better game. I read the signs. Climbed out of my Friday night skin and the concrete block around my ankle and pretended to be on the dance floor, good foot moving to the music, shoulders swaying, hair swinging in the smoke.

And then I knew.

And I cried. The slightest trickle of rain, falling from my eyes. "Are you o.k?" "mmmmmhmmmmm" and I smiled. "Is it your foot?" "uuuuuh...uuuh" "Your leg?" "uuuuuh..uuuuuh" and I smiled again. Because I had to, Grabbing the stainless steel stilts, like a pointy little pocketbook, and swiveling out of the chair.

"It's my heart".

And the shadow people...

Dancing with their ghosts...

Wallpaper on the Friday night walls.

When I can walk through the front door on two legs, both arms free, I'm gonna hug 'em.

Spells

I never put my boots on, not once. The army, smaller in numbers, but just as determined arrived in dribbles in my backyard. Time to build the castle. I smiled a little bigger each time I heard a door slam. And watched as these fellows, working 14 in a row, 6 in a row, lumbered out , yawning, but ready to work yet again. Two had to lean back in, reach far into their backseats, and unbuckle the very thing that made them who they are today. That made them go from boys, hell on wheels, to men….standing in the driveway, building a home for a stranger…..

Their daughters. First borns. And four year olds.

So on this Saturday, instead of digging trenches, dragging scraps, fetching nuts, and bolts, and beer…..I got to play….the girls and I. We went to hippie daycare….And I learned that my daughter ( 20 almost 40) is so silly when she mutters “Ma, you’re not eighteen anymore!” (afraid I’m going to slip, fall, get into trouble) because I know now, I’m forever four…..

We water colored and palm painted and ate potato chips with lettuce. We made up cheers to keep the troops going… “Go~Go, Daddy, Daddy, Sis Boom~Boom, Bah, Yeah……!” Jumping in Mick Jagger circles for the tah-dah! We rolled on top of the exercise ball, making giant blue somersaults in the grass….and of course, thunked a head or two on the down slide!

In the heat of the day (Nap time at hippie day care) they piled onto the hammock, balancing in the middle, toe to toe. And this is what I heard….

“You awe a good witch awen’t you?”
“Cowse she is”
“She’s going to spwinkle magic dust on us and we a goin to fall asweep fowevah”
“And a handsome pwince is gonna wide ovah here on his white howse and wake us up”

And so I did, of course…..

Abbra Kadabared them to sleep, with the wave of a right hand filled with golden glitters, left hand rocking the hammock into slumber land…..

Nap time at hippie daycare lasted exactly four minutes, the spell broken by a handsome dad whiling by on his way to the sawhorses …..
Then four flailing legs and four silly arms scrambling later,
Two little princesses tumbled off the magic carpet and onto the cool green grass….. “Yuah tuwn, yuah tuwn” they pleaded, guiding me onto the hammock.

And they whooed me to sleep with sweaty little handfulls of pink and gold glitter, blobbed on and rubbed in like neon beach sand. “In yuah haya” “pwetty wittle pwincess”….

And then they stood back and watched….

“we haff to wait on the pwince”
“what if she sweeps fowevah?”
“well he’ll come an wake huh up with a wovely kiss”

And they waited.
And I waited.
And finally, in cahoots, they ran and fetched the green baby doll and snuggled her up to my neck and “Hooway, hooway, yoah filled wit love now!”

From the deck,
The handsome prince~dad smiled,
“They forgot to come and get me”…….

In the beginning.....

She was just a shed. 48 hours later she takes slow learning-how-to-breaths. Her old skin, the one riddled with hooks and nails and plywood shelves has been peeled away, tossed in a giant heatwave to the side

An army came. The tiniest little feel-good soldier 4 years old, digging, painting, sweating. The oldest, 73, hauling, carrying, digging in the dirt and digging in his pockets. We had hippies and hippies, redneck loves, 3 piece suits in blue jeans, a nursing Mom, three generations of Chey's family. We had wayward sons, daughters home from college, neighbors, and friends from the bar. And they never stopped.

I watched for a moment, an orchestra in the Saturday heat:

One on a ladder pulling wires, hanging boxes...

two toting drywall again and again, another piece, appearing from nowhere,

One pouring concrete,

One hanging a door,

Three digging ditches,

Two cutting out new doorways and window spaces,

One right behind them framing.

Two on the barbeque grill.....jerk chicken juice mixing with sawdust in the wind....

Night came hard and fast. Just like the beer. At dusk we partied and told stories and the sweat turned to sweet dust, powdering our skin. We wrote in the concrete. Because we could. The children colored there. Because we let them.

And we all watched. The little shed slowly coming to life.

"You should name her" Eric said....."Gimme Peace".....and I smiled. This morning with my coffee, I sat on the deck and she smiled back at me through her new window to the world. Her walls are insulated and her cieling hung. 12 sheets of drywall are up, only 4 left to go. Her new doorway is waiting on visitors to knock and her old doorway, waiting for it's new face. Outlets are ready for Christmas trees and microwaves. Water is just inches away.

On Monday, Ronnie starts his next round of treatments. The pink stuff. The bad stuff. Hopefully the good stuff here will make it all a little better. And he'll have a place to hang his cowboy hat.

Thanks to all you all for cheering, clinking, sending good thoughts our way. We're tired soldiers today.....

The last hello.....

It's just a driveway....fifty feet of fifty year old gravel, limestone, river rocks lining the lane. Flattened pennies, heads down, are crunched into the mix, a poor man's coquina. There are no signs here. "Keep out" or "welcome" either. It's not one-way only. You're free to come and go. And welcome is a given....

But there comes a time.

I opened the window, the kiss of freedom, planted like a forever tattoo on his cheek, tracing-paper thin, and should have known......

He'd be back. Crunching the gravel....

Breaking up is hard to, letting go is harder.....

And I don't believe in the last dance, the last kiss, the last good-bye.....but rather the good film, the best movie ever, snapped, broken in the middle of the reel, and the ending never known, but imagined in everyway. And the story frozen. Just so and perfect. Not tainted by cliche's and punchlines. Destroyed by the very act of salvaging. And I told him so....

There at the river. Skinny legs dangling over the side of the makeshift embankment. Blue eyes and brown eyes together in the quiet, dragonflies dancing on the muddy water the only sound. And we smiled. At the enchanted ballet they played for us. Periwinkle and lavender girls, fluttering by in transluscent petticoats, shimmery sugary tu-tus, buzzing, splashing, on the rheumy dancefloor. They circled above us, waltz of the flowers, a halo of dragonflies.....and followed us to the car. I paused, with the door open, before climbing into the seat, as they passed in a pastel parade, and waited for their kiss....

The engine, as throaty and scratchy as our left over voices from the night before, took over the silence. Engulfed it. And we drove here, to the painted house, to the poor man's driveway where the engine idled, hovered, hot breath on the miles beneath us.

"Say the words" I whispered....climbing out , unfolding.

I watched him through the dusky swirls of lime, as he backed out. First gear. Almost second.
Right hands to our own lips,
the kiss...
right hands raised to the sky,
stretching,
fingers in a V.........

peace~love
we whispered to the wind....