Beach Fire

She keeps me warm

Finally I am home.

Tucked in my bed with one dog on one side and another dog on the other — I've missed their rowdy clingish affection, truth be told — and all I have on are the socks she gave me and the shirt she told me she loves.

And all I have on is the scent of fire smoke because we sat on a log right over top of our beach fire, which burned and sizzled in a hole in the sand underneath, dug by some dog.

I met her in a fine state, but by the time we were setting up the tent I started to cry, I don't know — with stress, sadness, fatigue? Changes afoot in my household and my heart. I was worn out. My nervous system buckled over and fell down. The wind blew the tent in many directions, then ballooned it up all at once, like it would fly straight across the border if we let it.

It should've been funny.

It was funny, but I kept feeling a mouthful of tears and fighting it back.

Then I walked down the beach a ways, ostensibly to pick up a big rock for guying down the tent. Looking out at the grey ocean I started sobbing all by my lonesome, and cried all the way back to the tent and I was inside it shivering and sobbing before she came in and said 'Are you okay?' and I said 'No.'

Then she stopped what she was doing and held me right there so I could test the waterproof-ness of her green parka with my abundant tears.

'I'm here, I'm here,' she said. 'It's okay.'

I lay there with her spooning me, looking at the white/blue fabric of the tent and feeling lost, just lost.

But then we talked and I cried on her some more, and we lit the fire.

I leaned back against her, her strong arms around me, her strong legs around me. She kissed my neck and my hair, unfolding herself patiently every time I got up restlessly to stoke the fire embers.

'Are you hungry?' I asked, and she declined a snack.

But she was hungry for something because we laid in the tent making out for a long time, and then I rolled on top of her beautiful body.

Just then a long train went by, moaning and rocking.

I straddled her hips and she pushed her hands down the back of my jeans, holding my ass and moving me as I sat on her and tongued her mouth, wishing I wasn't so sad I couldn't fuck her.

But it felt so good to feel our pelvises pushing into each other, something physical to push against the roaring of the train and the sound of the waves just beyond our tent. Somewhere ecstatic for my grief to go, for a moment.

'I'm sorry, I'm so heavy today, not very sexy,' I mumbled. As if there is, or would ever be, any kind of expectation or pressure for sex between us.

Finally we packed the tent and headed to the pool for a long steam and sauna, and following that she gave me three wonderful goodbye kisses before I drove down the highway to get the ferry home.

There was something of my heaviness that I left on the beach there. I must have fed it to the ashes of the fire.

Now I'm home, and though life is changed, it isn't changed too terribly when she is here, alive, warming my broken heart like the beacon of sunlight she is.

She keeps me warm.