rest stop

You were in my dream last night.  I leaned against you.  I could feel the soft worn cotton of your black and gray flannel shirt; unbuttoned I slipped my hand inside.

I leaned against you, away from the night.  A wet sky dripping across the openness of the desert.

Between us was the knowing.  The weathered fence line of a friendship that leans deep.

Even as you spoke I felt your hand agree to this arrangement as it came to rest on my side.

Around me, two conversations going on at once.  The one waltzing in the night between 4 people (5 if my silence was to count) and the one unspoken between you and me.

It's not a mistake that I know this table well.  It's at a rest stop.  A tiny patch of shade off a two-lane highway among the sage and salt grass.

It's what I fell asleep thinking about.  The desert in the winter.  The sound of the morning under my feet when it is too cold to be out.  The metal smell of water stubbornly cold and refusing to warm to the flame.    

I fell asleep running between twisted junipers on a long straight road as I tried to assure myself that I am ready for what is coming my way.

Today is the last calm before the on coming storm.  In my head I slide back and forth between pressing against the glass and hiding at the back wall.

I have a plan for how to make the next month work for everyone around me.  I am the only variable unaccounted for.

But I can still feel you breathing; white cotton t-shirt beneath the black and gray, dirty dark Levis, thin ribs, thick sun kissed skin, and rough, strong hands.

The look in your eyes as you mid word cast a single glance down at me.  It is a look I have seen pass between us at least a hundred times.  Even though we have, the look doesn't age.

A rest stop.  At nightfall.  A table nothing was brought to.  Out on the desert's edge.  And the idea of you sitting beside me.