North Carolina and the Moment In Which People Kiss.

I sang the words of Joni Mitchell and pretended to own barstools as my sweaters lost color, I scribbled words on napkins and slid drinks underneath them, I pretended to be... him. “Buy me something, something I can wear around my neck and place pictures in, something that sparkles, something.....pretty,” I asked him. He shook his head because he knew about my tendencies to break chains when I felt too locked up, he knew the way I loved to run. I stopped for a second and paused the moment we were supposed to kiss in, I placed my head on his lap and told him of North Carolina~ only because I loved the words. I stopped there, sometimes, on the borders that separate Virginia, I've thrown my life on hotel room floors, losing it under the bed just so I could sleep, I've walked out and left myself behind, and I've wondered, those times, about the meaning of forever. We met, he and I, you know, in a hotel, in a room where the key unlocked me, and I had thrown myself to the floor with a black skirt and a pair of fishnets and h i d under the bed while he smiled... I kept my eyes open, on top of bedspreads and headboards and I kept thinking that we'd stayed too long that we stayed past the moment where people kiss... and I wondered, that time, if that moment meant forever, but I forgot to ask and was too frightened to hear the answer. Years later, we slept, we dreamed in North Carolina, after I sang him Joni Mitchell after he gave me something pretty, he gave me his name to dangle around my neck.