(Stretch and Flex V360 Experimental Flash Fiction:)

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1


Clima's coming - a warm wind wanders through everything making bells. A glockenspiel knock is ticking the clocks of this clear night, while art is a hungry stomach to consume him, or the hot air balloon to keep him aloft. Hold tight, this lightness all of a sudden doesn't want to be alone. Tug tug tug the soles of his feet on the beach road, his toes wriggling the sand wanting freedom from touches, and yet sensing delight.

A near full moon follows paper down the street; a rustle lifts anticipation to salt dry lips. 'Clima's coming' she had whispered, and now her music surfs the wind. Blow accordion, a saxophone, and then the tone of her gypsy violin; she is dancing again on the boulevard before the dusty days sweep in. How art keeps him afloat, buoyant as guide line channels marking the sea with pathways, and she is saying 'come to me', walking, not walking; 'or lift a coin through the gusty air – and stay a while...' He watches the crowd revel in her song.

Gentle night, teasing breeze - "Clima's coming - can you taste it? Enjoy your breath now before tomorrow takes it. The night is ours - survey our land, and sing before the moon is lost in a thick yellow soup of sand." Tonight, for her, there is no returning, and no returning home. She is his beautiful vagabond asking for now in her notes. Today, he thought she was the horizontal body in quicksand, his hand clasping hers from solid ground, saying, '...Float...' She didn't understand. She had said she thought he was turning her to stone.

Ship masts creak, everything a stretch, the fog wall rolls - "Stay with me this time?" Where else would she go? "Stay with me?" he says, as clima runs amok through the wind chimes. "Wait the silent hours before it arrives and sleep in clean white sheets. Live with me the three days behind the glass?" She plays every note of argument, every pull on the string of longing. "Haven't you had enough?" She drives the bow through every rebuff - slow - quick, quick, slow, and her dark eyes clash.

The wind lifts him off the path, taunted, but his heart is not a prison, and art need not always be hungry on the road. Now art is a hot air balloon to keep him aloft, and she is in a poem to write when he gets home. She plays that song and he is the ghost who won’t be haunted – "Goodbye my love."

2

He is as sober as a judge, lucid, but he would not trust himself with an important decision until he has had some soup. He is so tired, the kitchen is as dusty as he, and he needs the straight lines of prose to clean up. It is break time for the true musicians, when the doorbell rings.

"Home" she says, looking over his shoulder, "to just the two of us?" She runs her finger through the dust; hot, cold, hot blows the whistling air in circles spinning lusty gusts at midnight. She came.

He swallows the moon, wipes his sandman tired eyes, and her heavy lashes blink over the glass of cold water. They drink and their lips are wet and ruby red again. She takes the bandana from her hair – hot, cold, hot, blows the whistling air. "Clima's coming in. Stay with me this time?" The fog wall rolls and a sand-swirl screams with their laughter settling on everything. Batten down the hatches; dampen down the shelves, sweep, mop - run a scented bath to get the smell of dust off.

3

She is striking in his green robe, and he is a dusty trail hand, wanting to look and not touch. For him, he thinks it comes down to this: there is nothing more precious than what is found in the quiet. "You shower?" she says, "I'll make some soup" and art is in her hand chopping in the kitchen cooking, or in her song, and in a poem long forgotten. His heart is in the shower washing away the sand, imagining what a gypsy in a green robe does when she thinks there is no one looking.

You slice at ribbons
snip, snip, snip,
and it all goes dark
until you see yourself in the shine of the blade,
smiling,
take the blade away - you see -
you can't cut ribbons of light...


Months ago a naked traveller had come out of this bathroom, high on the oils he had put in her bath, high hopes for a night of sex, no strings. She had walked wet footprints across the slate towards him. "There are always strings," she had said, "There will be one between your Island and mine tomorrow – you'll see..." He had given her his bed, and while she slept he had sat up wondering if she felt held by a tender warmth, like when a hand holds the memory of a stone. Yes - he had made her a gem. She was right. He had made her a stone - but he didn't want her sinking in a sand swamp of love - if love was a drowning, then the water should make her gleam.

4

That morning she shines. They move around each other in easy circles of eight; they shower, eat; she restrings her old violin, shuts the shiny case, and leaves.









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