summer night
Tonight I miss the hot sensual city summer night of age nineteen; gazing out at a sky of stars hanging over the sweltering air. Owning nothing, owed to nothing, open only to the first real love of my life, the colors--reds and blues and greens, everything full of creativity. Lying naked in bed with her, tracing the curves, watching how the starlight fell on them.

I’ve written a lot of the misery of my life at that age, and too little of the beauty.

Never again would I be so naively open to every experience. How I long sometimes for the colorful blankets draped on the wall, for the belief in the Muse, for a life given to dreams. There is nothing more sensual than a hot summer night in the city, in a run-down apartment in a shady neighborhood, in a city too hot to move, able to just breathe. To paint bodies, draw figures on the skin. To taste skin.

Sometimes it all comes back, even though it was long ago. The echoes inside me still.