I turned thirty. It didn’t rain. I didn’t bleed or die. The sky was clear. The same old stars. I walked not rode. It was cold but not freezing. It felt… anti-climatic.
Then I met you.
My mind was a blank, washed clean and waiting to be filled with something. I didn’t want to think anymore. But no hunger pulled me. I drifted. I was one feather on the breeze, not a wing.
The beat. The thump-thump-boom of a club I don’t know. Can’t remember the name. Can’t remember the street. Thought today, tonight, would be full of rethinking, remembering, reliving, regretting but there’s nothing inside. Wish there were something inside.
Red light, yellow-white, blue-purple flash. My ID. Scorpion hand-stamp. The bouncer has gauged ears and his belt buckle is a Colt.
Dance floor trance, free-mixing live DJ makes me close my eyes. Good. This is sweet, this is blood and speed and power racing. This is filling up. I don’t want the music to stop. Not ever.
I am being rewired.
I just don’t know it yet.
One… two… a third hour weaves around my body. I am three hours old. I am aware of no bodies, not even my own. I am as I’ve never been. Not moving for movement’s sake but just a note, just a melody line in the background, just a bassline in my veins. I am filled with liquid sound. I am music not flesh.
My eyes open. I blink away teardrops of sweat. My lips are salty, my throat is dry. Have I been singing, screaming, crying? Maybe just dancing. I move off the floor toward the bar. A Coke would be good, I think. Mundane. Simple. Me.
I am waiting for my turn. My elbows on the chrome. My thoughts in the bliss of the music, my bones still buzzing with reverb. Then a whisper across my ear, “Happy birthday,” and my name like I’ve never heard it. Accented and slow and deep and completely unknown to me as if my name were some endearment in another language, a language both ancient, sacred and erotic like a Psalm or a sunrise.
Turning in slow motion. Suddenly, unreasonably, illogically, skin is threatening to catch fire. I think I hear you breathing, fanning the flames. The hollow of your throat, the caramel curve of your nape. The delicate links of a triple gold chain studded with garnets like drops of blood. Your pulse.
“Do I know you?”
“Now you do.”
A few blonde curls have escaped the dozen golden braids that create a frame around your face. Four dozen more are pulled back with a black silk scarf, each braid tipped with a red glass bead.
“What do I know?”
“My name.”
“Which is?”
“Julianna.”
You push hair off my face with your palm and thumb, making sure we have as much contact as one hand and one cheek will allow. I am staring at the defined muscles in your bare arms. They move like something molten under your skin. You have an Aztec glyph on your right forearm, the tat is jet black. I am certain I have never seen you before in my life.
“Anything else?”
“Capricorn. Forty. Army Reserve.”
“Christian?”
“Agnostic.”
And you’re smiling at me with this crooked, half-smile. Like you know everything about me -- every secret, every play, every recipe in my genome. Your eyes are blue-green above sculpted cheekbones. I have never seen a deeper gaze. You are reciting silent volumes in a language I thought I knew but I’d obviously only learned the vowels. You are so… *certain.* I shake my head. I try to breathe.
…a, e, i, o, u and... oh y not…
“Look, I’ve never--”
“I can’t imagine.”
A beat. I laugh.
“You’re blushing.”
“I’m blushing.”
You kiss me.
And I realize that I do know you after all.
You’re the woman I’ve been waiting for.
