~

the first night she sits by herself

in the coffee shop, reading.

~

i was sitting alone in the coffee shop, reading.

~

reading over a cup of decaf,

alone, the place is empty.

annie comes by, i've seen her around.

she sits across from me,

lights flashing across her forehead

like the goodyear blimp. we make conversation.

the lights glow brighter, evermore insistent. i am not sure.

she leaves.

the next night is the same,

but we leave together.

the stairs to her second floor apartment

are on the outside of the building,

and the dreary, dark, dank, depressing night follows us up the steps

like a country and western song,

the wooden steps sodden,

the soft west-coast pine

saturated with pacific drift,

drifting up the stairs,

drifting into bed,

the pacific swells, the waves,

the surf, the cry of gulls, the sand pipers

stabbing at coquina and dancing away from incoming waves.

beautiful, thick, long, black, sutorētohea

spread across white pillows

white skin

legs opening and closing, sea-mist scent, bivalve lovers

white sheets whiter in the moonlight

legs whiter in the moonlight, but jet black there

diving through the kelp forest

bottle-green, translucent, looking up to see the moonlight,

fractals of moonlight, and it is silent,

diving thirty, forty, sixty, a hundred meters below,

among the forest floor,

urchins, sea-stars, anemones, 

in slow motion,

goose barnacles in slow motion, but slowly, slowly

we come to the surface

taking in huge lungfuls of air, annie, pale, the lights flickering, 

flickering, flicker, flicker and fade to black,

but for the moonlight on her eyelashes,

on her thighs,

on the white sheets.