By Shadygirl fading_shade@hotmail.com
Date: 20 February 2000

He Met Me in a Field

	He met me in the middle of a field of brown grass. Autumn had been 
blushing her embarrassment across the landscape for weeks, and her innocence 
was now waning, at last. We walked towards each other, like lovers in a movie, 
gravitating, as if even turning around and walking in the opposite direction 
would still lead us into each others arms. But he stopped a few feet in front 
of me, too much distance for even our fingers to touch, and he knelt on the 
crunchy brown carpet, making me feel momentarily like a goddess. Until I saw 
his eyes. 
	He laid out souvenirs and I plucked through them with clumsy fingers, 
faking disinterest. Watch faces and chains tinkling the only sweet noise for 
miles. His lips curved but showed no teeth, hiding his full expression and I 
felt wounded and suddenly wanted to grab as many of his watch faces and run 
and hide and dig a grave and bury them with out him seeing me. I did not want 
him to see me anymore. His eyes were hurting me, burning me in a way I can never
 fully explain. Draining me of me, somehow. I held my hand in a fist, afraid it 
would reach out suddenly and slap his smile-crooked cheek.  But his hand reached 
out first.
	The palm of his thumb was the first to touch my face and my eyes closed
 against my will. Too late! He knows now! I yelled at myself. I shook my head, 
my eyes squinting tighter together, trying to erase my thoughts and display my 
lack of care. Crunchy brown grass. Beneath my head! When did that happen? When 
did I lie down? When did I lose my strength with him? 
	I woke up shocked, mostly to find that I had never been sleeping, or 
dreaming, and he was still there, and we were still here, and he was getting 
closer to my inside and out, and nothing of me would move when his eyes met mine,
 until his body met mine. Then my lips moved and my hands and my legs and my 
vocal chords. Every thing followed this pretty Pied Piper through the silent
respect of his every intention.
	Trapped between crunchy brown grass and shame's heavy weight. 
	And when he took his final lips from mine, a flat coin was on my tongue,
 and I spit it out in confusion, to find a watch face lying in the field. I 
reached, but he grabbed it before I got the chance, and then, with the same 
toothless smile, stood above me, and he looked like a god. Not momentarily.  
	He walked away, as gods often do, and I watched and licked my lips for 
a lingering taste of him, but only found the tangy metallic remains of the 
watch face on my tongue.  I laid back in the grass when he disappeared, 

and searched an empty sky.