The Sky Between a Pale Existence and a Wild Heart

Portland bodies are pale and mild. Mild bodies need milk and honey—reduced in heat—drink and let it overflow from your mouth, your heart.

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When the sun radiates through the grey here, it might be delightful to devour something sweet and tangy, pull and tug with teeth, rub the frosting from lips, smile.

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There is sweet desire: a young lover feasting on her pale thighs. There is bitter yearning: a promise of such an act. How to choose? Both fill the gap between a passive, pale existence and a wild, honeyed heart.

Smithereen McClure in Portland

Smithereen paces back and forth, stopping to glance at the picture of the woman on the mantle. She is young, with long dark black hair, her lips sanguine and living. Every so often he will stop and hold the framed picture. He traces the face of the picture with his thumb and forefinger then rests the picture face down. This is Smithereen’s wife, Adele.
She left him several months ago to “find” herself on the west coast. First in San Francisco, and when that didn’t work for her artistic and spiritual pursuits, she hopped a train to Portland.
“Portland?”
“Yes,” she said, “I think it holds the key to love and longevity.
“What does that mean?
“It means,” she chastised, “it’s the perfect creative energy field.” There was a silence in the line, and he thought they lost a connection, then, “it holds a mystic power.” She whispered the last word.
“So do I.”
She laughed pleasingly and told him she loved him. That was the last time he heard his wife. Adele laugh so freely. It was also the last time he heard from her again.

The doorbell interrupts his pacing. It is the cab, he thinks, but when he answers the door there is no one there. He steps out on the porch to see both ways and steps on the corner of a book that has been laid there. He reaches down quickly and picks it up. “Visit Portland” is blazoned across the top —a cruel joke, no doubt. There is a honk from the cab he called earlier; he motions to the driver that he’ll be right back.
Smithereen enters the room and regards it like a stranger. He walks around as if he has seen it for the first time. Countering this feeling, he moves to the mantle and holds himself pious in front of it, stares at the downward picture, decides to turns it up. At once the room feels familiar and warm, and alive. He waits, closes his eyes, wishing her beside him and when it is not realized he lets out a sigh and slowly pulls his things together, suitcases and such. Reaching for the picture, he pauses; thinking I know what she looks like. Known it all my life. He leaves in no great hurry, lingering as if this is his last sanctuary, his last sacred place of refuge.