I called him from the trampoline.
It was out on the grass, beneath tall pines, and with a view
of the ocean from way up high…
My friends’ house was on ‘the ridge’, with far stretched views
of blue going on forever, beneath stretches of pine and fir and
brush that blended together to create the soft muted green
slide, leading to the blue of the Pacific along the NorCal coast.

“I’m jumping on a trampoline”, I told him.  He sounded confused.

“Where Are you?” he asked, and the long distance made a few
second’s  delay in our already challenging conversation.

“I’m at my friends’ house, where I’m working… ” I told him,
“and I’m outside in the Sun, looking at the ocean, and jumping
on the Trampoline…………..Naked…!  ”
I waited for the reaction.

“Reeelly?”  …I could hear his smile, and I jumped and giggled.
“Yes…!  and I’m Missing you.  I need to come there Soon…
I need to be with you Now!”
The jumping became more insistant…

“Waaalll….” came that all too familiar pause while thoughts
gathered like clouds.
“Oh jes geeve me a leetle longer, Babe”  he sort of whined now.
“I’m steeel studying for my lisence, an the test won’ be for a while…”

“OK, but I can’t keep on waiting forever” I said.
“It’s already been too long…”

It had been seven months since I’d left Brasil, seven long months
for us both to get it together, and be back together in Rio.
When I left, it was supposed to be Two…

He’d found and lost work, he’d called me drunk, so drunk he didn’t
remember it the next day, he’d called saying “theese theeeng in my
lap eees loooking vary goood to me right now”, meaning the gun he
warmed in his hands.
I talked him down from being sick, suicidal, sad, lonely and confused.
I’d heard him say “I can’t Dooo theeese alone”, meaning he knew he
needed me, and yet still he hesitated when up against the
actuality of my return.

I sorted through the arguments between my head, gut and heart.
Fear clashed with the knowing of connection, and the distance on
that long long line stretching between us made it even more vague.
What the correct path, the righteous path, the perfect timing was,
no one could know.

It had to be a balance between my needs and his, his fears and mine,
but most of all, a return of eyes and flesh in the present, to remind us unequivocally of the undeniable truth that we had found, just
eight months before.
I knew I had to be there, and in not much longer a time,
for both of our sanities.

________________________