The Skinnydippers

I've seen it in my dreams. Coming home to you. To this house. To this car in the driveway. To those gray clouds that promise rain. It is as though I've taken a long walk and forgotten where I live. I was lost for a while. But there it is—waiting for me—while holding you. 

 

We aren't the type that pray for sunshine and roses. For beaches and hybrids. We don't wear flip flops and baseball caps. We wear suits and dresses or nothing at all. Sometimes we go barefoot. We don't wake up for church on Sundays, but we believe, nonetheless. 

We don't eat at popular restaurants or make small talk with the neighbors or mailman. We are those who feed the ravens. Who make the trashmen wonder. Who don't desire popularity or fame. Who have few friends, but those we have are meaningful. We aren't on TikTok and you don't have an OnlyFans.

We don't have obligations. We write letters and use stamps and stationary. We use red wax and a seal with a skull on it. We have quills and ink wells and felt pens and mahogany writing desks. We probably have the last land-line phone in the county—a candlestick phone with the rotary dial. 

There's no pool in the backyard. There's only graves. No 72-inch TV mounted in the living room. The living room is for cocktails and lovemaking. For the rarity of company. When we die, we will die like we have died before, with elegance, as though we expexted it. As though it's an honor, and we've been waiting.  

We will lie there in an open casket to give our soul enough time to collect our things from our body to haunt the house properly. We might not live here forever, but we will be here forever. In the cobwebs in the shadowy corner of our favorite room. In the flicker of a candle or the fire of the fireplace. In the attic with the Harry Belafonte records, ready to pounce on any future owner who propose dreadful changes to our house. 

Maybe we won't die for a long time. Maybe death enjoys watching us. Or is too busy for us Nobody's. We walk around naked. Wrapped in quilts and velvet blankets. We sleepwalk. Sleep to noon. We make love several times a day to make up for when we will be too old and tired to do so, or from when we didn't know each other yet—all that wasted time. And we can never get enough of each other.

There's owls in the trees. A fire in the hearth. An oak table to hold the dead roses. There's a bell that no one rings. A dumb waiter undisturbed. We are the haunted house the neighbor kids fear, though we aren't even dead, yet. The one the salesman skips. We are the creepy, not the cool. Our mailbox is black and empty. Spiders make their home behind its black iron back. 

Vultures perch on the roof, and it always feels like Halloween. There are bats in the evening, and black cats play in the yard. There's a hill in the back for sledding when there's snow. A small pond to ice skate, and always the danger to drown through thin ice, or in the summer being that we are drunken skinnydippers. It is the way in which we lived—we have done what few people ever do—we have skinnydipped in each other's soul. And we have always been drunk on each other. 

You are my liquor. There's love in every nook and cranny. In every room and closet. There's wine in the cellar and bodies, maybe. I'm not sure. There's more spices than we know what to do with. Every book on the shelf has been read. I wonder what I'll do if you die before me. I might write to you, love letters, in care of death. Or maybe I'll make love to your ghost—to your vapor. I am still naked in your soul.