Redki Gora

Redki Gora

They crafted the sort of intimacy that suggested they’d never return to who they were before – that sort of all at once and not quite complete thrill that’s sometimes found on Friday’s. Struck on a secret in a hotel corridor, his quick head duck out of a door frame landed on the chatoyant brown of her eye as she stood like always in the middle, blue dress and red hair, looking like an American flag, standing still. She trailed her past like a kitten on a leash, unruly and unforgiving. He remembered.

A lifetime ago, they built a tree house, when he was an orangutan, and she a black eagle. He churned sweet ice cream for her from vanilla beans and mangoes; she showed him how to be spicy sweet. 

Tongues trailed and truth spawned, shared between the two like county fair cotton candy. He smelled like home when he came for her. She heaped her form under gypsy quilts and charms, decorating her  body in ornaments and the kinds of trinkets he might light. His shoulders sunburned; her fingers left imprints of reds and pinks, her own sunrise, on his skin. They spun opposing colors into the same flavor, two not-strangers, marked and distanced, but sewn together. She remembered.

Early afternoons and even later nights bent to whims of carnal associations. Coastlines and obligations left to move like boulders in their path. They traveled between the full leaf trees, making melody rhythmic. Flying foxes and sun bears crunched against the forgotten jungle floor. He caught her skin and bit down. Hard. She winced, grinned, remembering and forgetting everything in the moment. Separated over incarnations, she knew his eyes before she knew what to call him. He saw her magic before she showed herself in moonlight.

Seven isn’t a magic number. It leaves a longing that will only find an end in the next rebirth. No stones exchanges, promises made, names given. They let the candle light flame out, one Sunday in May, knowing the passing connection, fancied and gussied, will last for another time round. They leave one another knowing the moment was taken. Tattoo lines and colors memorized, those seven days of selfless knowledge moved between zest and zeal. On the ground, she looks up at the rare passing of clouds and sees a mountain in the distance.