YOKED

Jules squirted some sunscreen onto her palms before massaging it into her shoulders and the hard to reach blades of her back.   As the thick, white lotion spread, its scent drifted through the salty ocean air and I recognized it immediately.   Bonne Bell cotton candy lip balm.   I wore it religiously throughout seventh grade, convinced that icy pink was a good look for me.   It was the kind of silvery shade that older, high school girls were wearing.   I had a sparkly pink mini-skirt to match—one that received loads of compliments.   I do not miss the goopy feeling of synthetic gloss smacked across my lips, but the smell, oh God is it delicious!   It’s sinfully sweet, even better than real cotton candy, with an aftertaste of some inscrutable, tingling mint.   After all this time, more than a decade, the scent still moves me and I have to control the urge to reach over and smear Jules’ Ocean Potion’s SPF 30 all over my lips, just for old time’s sake.

There are times when just looking out at the world is too much. With impeccable self-possession, she flaunts color, texture, pattern, dimension, and flickering foils of light.    All cascade through my gossamer lens and I am overtaken by the presence of these things.   Only then do I see why photos and video recordings are so widely cherished—they hold the focus, which hurried eyes that have seen-it-all can not grasp.   Yes, much is required to give pause, to linger longer and let all that in. Oh, but how I long to receive the world, to be daily engorged with streams of color, shapely spectacles or just plain matter.   All of my patience and attention I will exchange for one glimpse of that deep-down presence in things.   Yet, after my eyes roam the rolling country, tracing every verdant dip and golden contour, they fall upon him – a glorious human face – and I do not know if I can bear it any longer.   I must look away.   All that beauty looking back at me.