Montana

He couldn't wrap himself around the mountains of Idaho, but I was winding around her curves. She invited me in. I had descriptors, feelings. Nothing seemed to overwhelm me anymore. Not even her smile.

I guess you have to be in the right frame for that but I had begun to feel untouched. Until, that is, Montana brought her secrets to bare down on my head. My knees touched her grasses. My eyes swept her blues, grays, blacks. I stood on her borders, took a step forward, and slid into my melodrama:"I can't fathom me anymore. My thoughts, my actions sweep towards different dimensions of mountain peaks, wolves' cries. I'm holding Me together Macguiver style: shoestring and saran wrap."

Something about saying that out loud made me catch Montana in my lungs. She made me breath easier. Made me wonder how anyone could feel lost, when the mountains clearly speak of ones place in themselves. Not a conquering but a goal, an acceptance.

That's how I grasped Idaho, but maybe my delusions left me with a need to feel I could touch an entire eclipse of God's hand with just one finger of my mind. Silly god, delusions are for mortals. I thought I was neither. I thought I was both.

Montana giggles in the sunlight, rolls in the grass, sits down for tea. I suddenly feel like the light glinting from her shades reflects every part of me and dive into her pools. She seems satisfied with my searching, leans back into the sunset, and slips into something more comfortable: a black slip of night sprinkled with highlights of stars.

I think I'm beginning to understand.Montana took the dust and the grime and wrapped it up into a sandcastle of mountains, rivers, bison and wolves. They cut at each other, dance the dance, drink tea with Montana, watch her change her clothes and realize, slowly, like me, that her attire is their existence.

The sun begins to rise and I realize that I am naked. Montana begins to talk fashion and how fig leaves are so gauche, how she likes to wear her trees for rain, her sky for tanning and her wolves on gusty days. My eyes grow wide and she just shakes her head, pauses, then challenges: " what are your favorites?" I explain that a lot of times I can't make up my mind and end up wearing doubt a lot. She frowns and reaches for a tree that I had climbed the day before. "Oh" I say, she pauses and fingers the leaves.

I guess I assumed her clothes were mine to wear. But I just don't wear trees as bracelets quite the same way she does. She glows at me and slips me around her neck, clasping me in the back, for dinner. I am her accent. I am as precious as her trees, her rivers. My body is part of her beauties. She nestles my dreams on her lap. I reap her jubilance and tragedy, it all becomes my home.

Montana listens to these incoherent thoughts like whispers and gently kisses each one, glancing over at Idaho like an ex-lover, who then sighs and gives her a five dollar bill.

I've stayed a week now with Montana. She's convinced me to trash my sewing machine and just use all of my insides for my outsides. We joke about the weather, and she pretends not to be jealous when I mention Idaho's curves.