Lis Anna-Langston

The Story of (Us)

You only get one chance to fall in love for the first time… 

~ Douglas Coupland

{Opening scenes}

Fade in:

Two a.m., and the movie has just let out.  People stand around in groups, yammering about life, while a friend digs through his trunk for a black trench coat he just bought at a thrift store downtown.

Someone catches my eye and I turn.  You are standing next to a car talking to a group of my friends. I do not know you. Have never seen you before. But that smile. Oh my god, that smile. It reigns me in.

~

I lay awake all night waiting for the rain.  When it doesn’t come, I creep through the kitchen and out onto the upstairs balcony.  I sit suspended out in the darkness for a very long time, listening to the sound of trains passing in the night until the prospect of dawn finally sends me inside.  I go in, make coffee, and think about you in the parking lot.  I smell grapes and rain.  The sweet, cool scent lures me to my room where I slip out of my clothes and think about that smile.  

I drift like that until sleep takes hold.

~

“If you could do anything in the world, what would it be?”

you ask, standing in my dream.

“I’d love you forever,” I say.  “Love you in and out of time across centuries like two people connected by a silken thread.  I’d meet you in the alleys of Rome as a prostitute and consume you until you collapsed.  Then meet you in the coliseum battling unto death.  I’d find you by a campfire in a Medieval town and captivate you with my magic tricks.  I’d know the sweetness of your skin in a Victorian parlor even though I was the wife of a nobleman.  I’d look for your eyes in a crowded marketplace knowing the touch of a thousand years.  I’d kiss your fingertips if you arrived as a saint.  I would meet you at the gates of Hell with a passing wink.  And you?”

“I’d let you love me forever,” you say.

~

We see each other all the time, traveling in the same circle of friends, but we never talk.  You take my hand, leading me through dreams of dreams.  You are always a whisper away.  I know your name now. From the Bible. A Gospel. 

A secret Gospel.

~

I laugh genuinely, but I am not in the moment.  I am always days behind myself.  It is disorienting and frustrating.  Nothing about me feels real anymore.  I am always trying to get out of this dream and yet the dream is the key to reality.

We go on a date. Chinese. Fragrant covered pots of stir-fried beef and shrimp with lobster sauce. You watch me constantly. Red and gold lanterns hang from the ceiling. There are mirrors on the wall. 

I want you to kiss me.

I want to scatter trays, fragrant pots tumbling to the floor. I want you to kiss me like I’ve never been kissed before, burn deep like hot wax sizzling on the back of a provocative note. I want you beneath me, inside of me, in front of me, all around me. You are there and there and there, a thousand versions of you all waiting for the same kiss. All waiting for the moment when lip touches lip, linger touches sigh, hands dance across skin forgetting to ask why. 

But we don’t kiss. We fill ourselves with dumplings and laughter and yearning. The check comes and I total the weight of my want.

~

I return home, and this is what I do.  I write pages and pages of poetry to this man, this man three years older than me, this man who is you, my obsession, man of my dreams, man who invades every pore of my skin, every corner of my mind.  I sit in the middle of my bed, moving nothing but my hand, dashing out words across the page.  I write.  I write for days, daydreaming, half-listening to everyone who crosses my path, seeing only the image of you in my mind.  I chronicle every inch of your body, every passion you arouse in me, every crease in your neck, every breath, every fingernail filed expertly around the edges, every movement of your mouth when you say come here or please or I want this.  I go on and on. I tuck a breathy little sigh in your wallet before you board the plane in Knoxville.

~

Making out wasn’t something I considered a practical activity.  Now I love the breathy heat of your face close to mine, the feeling of your cheek as it grazes mine, the seconds when our lips touch before moving on.  It is hypnotic, drawing me in with such satisfaction.  The sensation of moving around your face is like that of planets rotating around a fiery sun.  Blinding.  Moving closer, then away.  My mind spins and our tongues touch.  My body trembles.  The heat moves up through my body until the surface is almost too hot to touch.

I am on my knees worshipping, slipping into the moment like a velvet dress.  You wear pleasure well.  The scent of you fills my lungs.  I do not feel you touching me because my fingertips are ecstatic, alive, vibrating with the sounds inside my body.

The cool air in the hotel room blows across my face.  Your cheek touches mine.  Soon I will forget my name, forget how many miles I traveled to be here, forget where my car is parked.  Soon I will forget everything because I will know.  In my mouth I can feel you, against my tongue, my lips, and nothing is lost.  It is the sweet feeling of sucking on a piece of fruit until I feel faint. 

I am so hungry.

~

In blinding late-afternoon South Carolina sun, we are in traffic. I nervously pull my hand up to grab my headrest. My fingers collide with your hand and my body sizzles. I pull my hand away but every cell in my body yearns for more of you. Very slowly, I reach back and hook my fingers into yours. When the car comes to a complete stop, I hear you say, “I am going to take this opportunity.” And you lean forward. It is like a tidal wave. I know it is coming. I can see the eight-thousand-foot wave cresting above me. And then your mouth is on mine. The sumptuous feeling of tongue and lips. That meeting of mouths, only inches down from our minds.

~

If I were filming the moment, we would be in a hotel room. Sun setting. Me stretched out on a bed. You naked and walking to the edge. The curtains closed. A blade of light cuts along the seams. I am on my stomach. 

You smile, lost in thought.  A hand reaches up to touch me, but I cannot see it.  Only the film captures this movement.  The expression on your face changes.  The eyelids are heavier now.  I can feel your hand resting on my back.  Softly.  So very softly.

~

A drop, a splash, a trickle down the window and the sound of the trees blowing in the distance.  The sharp, clear scent of thunder with a rumble and a boom, a flash of brightness.  A breeze blows in from across the world, from across this desert that is my body, that knows no boundaries.  Night has come, ushered in by the rain and the stars have drifted up into the dark billow that hovers just above this quiet oasis.  A sprinkle, a tickle, a drop, and a flash.  The rain comes into this moment without words. Into a farmhouse far from everything we ever knew before. I look out the window. See a world at once familiar and unknown. This moment changes everything.

~

On the second floor in the setting sun, I see the rapturous way your head tilts back when you are being pleased by my body. How your eyes change from a deep gray to an ocean green. The five o’clock shadow on your cheeks highlights the place where jaw curves into neck. I want to bury my lips there and taste you. Ride with your sex in me until the world ends.

Later, I will whisper the naughtiest thing I have ever uttered. You will be naked, completely, legs relaxed. Me next to you. And I will whisper all the ways in which I will please you. 

Mesmerized.

The urgency of your breath.

The depth of your desire.

How you want to ride out on that feeling

Until it explodes into the moment

and I lower my head to lick your belly.

~

I want to become your possession, to belong to you completely, to give myself to you as I give to no other.  My body is always wet with the taste of you.  I begin to crave your kisses as I crave water.  I sink deep down inside of myself hoping that I will drown and float to the top as pure and magnificent as a tiny, clear bubble.  

I want to become your masterpiece.

~

In your arms, I am captured yet free, each part of you belonging to me.  Your pleasure is my pleasure.  It is like walking a tightrope, a dangerous obsession.  Everything hinges on the slightest movement. I cease to become the girl everyone knows.  Instead, I pull from deep inside to find the answers to my questions, and when I am pushed over the edge, 

I fall freely. 

You are a man, with a man’s desire 

and I want to bend beneath it.

~

In a hotel room in South Carolina, I watch you cross the room, watch how you lean to retrieve an item or pour coffee. I watch how your eyes drift and settle on an object.

How they settle on me.

How you stand naked eating fried green tomatoes. 

How your body falls exhausted into sleep.

Later, you say to me, 

“I like the way you look at me when you think that I don’t see you.”

~

Every conversation, every important decision, every word, every glance, every shiver, every sigh, every agreement, every laugh, every kiss, every moment. 

Together.

~

What the mind learns, the body knows.

~

Hidden within the fibers of a farmhouse bed are my every secret.  

A secret for every thread.

~

Out on the great expanse of your body

I sip air,

and taste the night,

drink heaven,

and swallow delight.

My fingertips travel to the horizon of your thighs

down in-between

to soft sacred places I have never been.

I am drunk in a maze of completion.

Sober in a complete maze of drunk.

I ride out to the far reaches of my sighs and gasps

and linger

on the vast, unfamiliar terrain of your chest.

~

I have a crazy dream. A totally crazy dream. We are getting married. Making out in a church. You take my panties and put them in your pocket. We go to the altar. I do and you do and we do. And the kiss cascades over me like a waterfall.

I tell you about the dream in July. On the 12th. Exactly one month before my birthday.

In the month named for Julius.

Caesar.

The very one who had an affair with Cleopatra.

And sailed down the Nile.

~

I will leave poems in your wallet, more precious than cash. I will spray them with my perfume and kiss each one. I will prepare gourmet meals and bring bottles of moonlight, star dusted cakes, notes for you that I first compose on my inner thighs with a permanent marker. These things I promise you. I will open the doors to let magic inside and hold your hand and kiss you in public and parked cars. I will give you honesty, laughter, love, lust, devotion, trust, sexiness, intellect, and beauty. I will give them to you always

I will love you more the next day than the last. I will create a private place for us to retreat from the world. I will hold you sacred and divine and when we depart this earthly paradise we will live radiantly in the stars. This is promise you.

I will love you for who you are not who the world presses you to be. I will be with you always, in this world and the next, now and forever, today and tomorrow, walking or riding, coasting or sliding, side by side, hand in hand, heart in heart, until the seams of our separate lives disappear and we merge into a single, holy, divine one.

This I promise you.

~

For my birthday you send a huge box.

Full of you.

A shirt

A CD

A candle

A bottle of wine that neither one of us can know

will sit unopened for the next four months and eight days

until the cork is popped

at a table in a farmhouse

where I talk to you

and touch you

and eat goat cheese rolled in cinnamon and cranberries.

And make love in a wooden chair.

There is no way of knowing.

At that moment.

That day in August.

As I unpack each item and inhale the perfume.

The dainty bottle with an L that dangles from the top.

How could you have ever known,

packing that box

that

The L stands for Love.

~

In ceremony I am ordained at the end of August.

Twenty days into a fast.

Afterwards I press my forehead to the ground

and I thank the ancients, really thank them,

for all of the beauty and wonder and awe and love

they have gifted and inspired in me.

After I am baptized and made holy

I step into the night

rich and exquisite as only the night can be.

Venus burns like a diamond

in the sky

so bright and so big.

And my whole body fills with the most magnificent love

For you.

My love for you fills the space between every electron and proton.

It is then I know.

With certainty.

Most definitely.

That I am in love with you.

And as I walk between the chestnut trees to my car

I vow to share this love with you.

My offering. My gift to you.

Wind quivers through the leaves.

The world is perfect.

~

I have discovered in the fading light of a February afternoon

that every coincidence is a guidepost, a calculation.

Heartbeats are currency.

My heart beats for you in the firelit room of my soul. This I promise you.

~

One day you said:

The Us we create will not be made from our old I.

And then we soared skyward

straight into the center of the sun

and melted into one.

We wake in each other’s arms.

Eat pancakes

Listen to the music of pleasure.

We drink wine

and open presents. 

I kiss you 

In airports

Parking lots

Scenic overlooks

Desire rises in my body

and crashes down onto you

and from this we begin to build a life.

Together.

The story of Us.

Descended from the Eastern band of Cherokee, Lis Anna-Langston was raised along the winding current of the Mississippi River on a steady diet of dog-eared books. She is a Parents’ Choice Gold winner, a two-time NYC Big Book Award winner and Independent Press Award winner, a Moonbeam Book Award winner & an IBPA Benjamin Franklin Award winner. Thrice nominated for the Pushcart Prize, she is Finalist in the Brighthorse Book Prize, William Faulkner Fiction Award and the Thomas Wolfe Fiction Award. Her work has been published in a stack of literary journals including: The Literary Review, The Merrimack Review, Emrys Journal, The MacGuffin, Sand Hill Review, & The Emerson Review. Her novels and screenplays have been optioned and her films screened worldwide. She can be found pretty much any day of the week out in the wild plucking stories out of thin air. www.lisannalangston.com