my sleep was filled with hanging moss and willows weeping into the lazy river winding in the back

it was a black and white southern gothic

syrupy accents and barely concealed tension behind an affluence of manners biting sarcasm

you were there

you and i were the only ones without accents, the only ones that the thinly veiled hostility was missing from

you had on a corseted dress, shades of white and gray that billowed around your ankles, a parasol resting against the table between us

your hair pulled back and the slightest glistening sweat on your arched neck, my tongue twitched at the sight of it, longing to kiss it, to taste you

i was in a three piece suit of charcoal gray, the jacket over the chair behind me, tie untied and hanging loosely from my neck, top two buttons of my shirt unbuttoned, smile on my face

we sat on the veranda and drank and watched as the neighbors dilly dallied through the rigamorale of normal life

no more than shadows moving in the late afternoon haze, snippets of conversation floating lazily to our ears, of crops and gossip and other meaningless things with a decisive undertone of razor like tongues

but when you spoke, at last after minutes of my staring without meaning to stare, the air lit up like fireworks and explosions of color sang in the monochromatic world

the sound danced across the bed of flowers i knew you had asked for and i had painstakingly planted, and as you whispered the blooms came to life in an array of dazzling shades

i found myself unable to make out your words as the flashes of color sprang to life around you, instead i let the currents take me where you willed

your laugh sent ripples of blues and purples that spun around my head, pink and teal bubbles trickling from your lips into my ear

the thick humid air and floating scaled backs of alligators in the river, the hanging moss blowing in the wind and wispy snakes slithering in the grass

your effervescent words sending fractures through the pencil sketched world around us, bringing life to all around us

and i was happy there

the glass of whiskey sitting untouched as i was far more inebriated on your presence

part of me knew it was a dream

the same part that wished it would never end

i could live in this black and white world happily with you eschewing color with your tangibly intangible thoughts

the oppressive heat nothing but doodles on the margin, strokes of inaccurate shading on the book you wrote for me

the gentile slowly spoken phrases drifting out to us seemed to ignite our humors as we listened and laughed and tried to imitate them and failed miserably

your attempts sent waves of greens and yellow that tinted them every so slightly

i wanted to ask how you did that

made the world come alive

then i realized

it is how i always feel when we talk

this was just my brain giving your affect an effect

translating what i felt into palpable resonance

so i just let it wash over me

lost in the idea of being lost in you as the crickets sang and willow branches danced to the song of your voice down the bayou into the unknown lands just on the other side of the page