Lately Drac’s been thinking about….
Being the last house on Baron’s letter carrier route. Sometimes he tries to get deliveries done a little earlier than noon so he has more time to linger near your picket fence.
Parking his bike near that big tree in your backyard, quickly fixing his wind-blown hair to make it neat and tucked back behind his ears as he approaches you crouched over your rose bushes.
The way your face lights up to see him, even if it’s just to see that small box tucked under his elbow of new watercolor paints you ordered or that letter addressed to you from a publishing company both of you crossed fingers for, hoping they’ll accept some of your poetry.
That sudden fade in your flickering eyes despite that smile you keep on your face in front of him. That small tiny bite on the inside of your lip that chokes down rejection- followed with a big exhale and a oh well demeanor he sees more than often.
There’s always next time!
A voice as sweet as the smell of those salmon-pink Boscobels between the two of you with a wonderful scent like myrrh, pears, elderberries and almonds- all from your care, you speak again,
“How were your deliveries this mornin’ Baron?”
He shrugs, a voice soft, always soft spoken, chest tightening from the way you twirl a pruned rose between fingers while not breaking eye contact as he licks lightly chapped lips,
“Nothin’ too ‘memorable… but… I did see on the marquee that they’re playing Wutherin’ Heights later this afternoon.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah… N’I saws you readin’ that book once, so I just figured it’d be somethin’ you’d be interested in knowin’. ”
Clutching the soon to be discarded letter in your hold, the thought of him watching from afar as you sat in your garden with one of your favorite Brontë sisters brings a fluttering to your very center like wisp butterflies on meadow buttercup wildflowers.
“Which one are they playin’ ?”
“Huh?”
“Which version of the movie are they playin’ for the matinee? The one with Timothy Dalton or the one with Laurence Oliver?”
“Oh…” his lips stay in an opening, showing off the bottoms of his two big and cute front teeth. It closes as lips press tightly and he bashfully smiles with a shake of his head, “I’m not too sure… but I was thinkin’ about-”
He pauses, a small chuckle as it starts to heat up under his button up uniform shirt and postal service blue blazer at his neck.
There’s a gentle summer breeze that carries a small lock of his sun-bleached honeyed-caramel waves over his strong and pointed freckled nose that’s taking every bit of your strength to not reach over and tuck it back behind those big ears that were now as pink as your roses.
“I was thinkin’ about… askin’ if I could take you to see it. I ain’t never read the book like you, so, I don’t know what it’s really about.”
Baron watches as you tuck your nose into that large bloom, a hum of contemplation on the spontaneous event that interrupted your plans of doing nothing but staring at an empty canvas or an empty page waiting for your wordsmith attention.
“You wanna take me to the movies?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he nods with a sincerity full of hope after waiting for an opportunity like this to come along for weeks, “-very much so.”
You smile at this boy, nay, young man, from the way you catch those few curls of dark hair peeking from his undershirt collar, the lines near his eyes as he squints to see you in this high-noon light.
This is your Baron, the young man that inspired you to pour out those couplets of humid summertime yearning after these few minutes of interaction on the daily stained your every thought like golden tumeric until you laid yourself to rest in a big empty bed.
You bet your Baron runs real warm, seeing him wear those silly mid-thigh length shorts even in late fall on his deliveries. The sweat on his brow evident of pedaling around town with a purpose, his wide palms smelling of the rubber gripped on his handlebars.
“Sure, Honey,” you smile at the man who was melting on the inside like a RocketPop from the way that sweet name breezed into his brain on this warm afternoon. “Sounds like a treat.”
A treat, he smiles, hopping back onto his bike, half a dozen roses in his basket you told him to put in some fresh water with a little bit of 7-Up so the blossoms lasted longer for his mother when he headed home to shower and change.
Honey, Baron catches himself helplessly and stupidly grinning at the thought of being your Honey.
Sweetness is everything he gave to you, sweetness is all he thought you deserved.
To hold those thorn prickled fingers of yours, woven between his; to kiss the tips that bury themselves in the earth and pinch the ink that flows poetry in motion.
He daydreams of listening to you call him Honey once more, imagining his head on your lap with his back to gingham under the clouds, soaking up sun and the recited words from your sonnets. Haikus. Prose poems. Anything, as your hand runs through his hair,
‘Did you fall asleep, Honey?’
‘Mm- just restin’ my eyes, Darlin’ ”
Oh my darling, oh my darling, you pop another clementine in your Huckleberry’s mouth before ruby lips come down to paint the apples of his cheeks like the canvases in your sun room.
So he neatly combs his hair, washes behinds his ears, and uses that old spice cologne that will tickle your nose as you greet him in that babydoll dress, Miss Mary Mack, dressed in black with silver buttons all down your back.
A pachyderm on his chest, his hand itches to rest upon the fabric’s juxtapose along your spine and guide you to your seats.
In the dark, shoulder to shoulder, seated upon plush velvet and sticky floors he’s trying to ignore, as the fatal and selfish side of love is projected onto the white screen. Baron gulps down nothing, despite the large Icee between your seats with two straws.
It’s the way he can smell your perfume, the way your bare knee rests upon his over-worn denim. The way your hand reaches over to his lap for popcorn and you softly whisper into his ear as you tell him to keep in mind certain things for the plot.
Baron would have to watch the movie again, overcome by the way you tucked an arm under his bicep to wrap around his elbow and lay your head on his for the rest of the movie.
Luckily, for him, you owned it on VHS.
Lucky for you, Baron still had a VCR.
‘It was not the thorn bending to the honeysuckles, but the honeysuckles embracing the thorn.’
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