With No Other Thought

 

It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of Annabel Lee;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.

She sat in the darkness of the night, watching the lightening streak across the waters. The storm wasn’t all that far off, the thunder was booming over the coast, echoing through her body.

She didn’t care. She welcomed the rain, the rushed waters of the waves foaming and the sound drowning out her thoughts. She loved this time of night. No one else ventured out here, save for the few who thought that remaking the love scene from ‘From Here to Eternity’ was fun. It didn’t happen often after the first time, the lovelorn finding out that sand in certain crevices of the body just wasn’t all that romantic once it was done. She remembered the first time that she had done it. She absentmindedly smiled and scrunched her toes in the sand.

She pulled up her knees and wrapped her arms around her legs. Her hair blew slightly with the wind, so she pulled all of it to one side. She lay her head down on her knees and closed her eyes. A cold chill ran over her, from head to toe, making her body shiver. She wished that she had thought to bring a throw, but too late for that.

She was tired tonight. The storm was now fast approaching and she debated going back to the white cottage above the sand bar. She could hear the faint tink tink tink of the wind chimes as the breeze played through them like Pan on his flute. She loved hearing the melody of the wood against the steel rods, it brought comfort to her heart.

She couldn’t decipher how she felt right now. Any other time she would be home preparing a wonderful night, looking forward to his coming back. Tonight it was different, hesitant. It was the unknown of things that had her spinning out of control. Not knowing was the hardest part of living she thought. There was always an answer for everything, right or wrong. There was always reasoning behind every action taken. She just wasn’t sure if she could even reason anymore. Or rationalize. Or make an excuse. There was none actually for any of this. The old adage ‘any excuse is better than none’ didn’t make her feel any better. Sometimes you just simply ran out of them, used them all up till there wasn’t anything left but an empty jar with the lid lying next to it. No more in the excuse jar.

So. Had she used up all her excuses completely? She really couldn’t think of anymore. And why was she using them anyway? Why did she feel like she had to? Was it that she was using it as a shield? A cross or holy water to ward off anything that could possibly do her more harm than good? And why the hell would it be harmful? She was getting herself all worked up again, and she could feel it. This was going on inside of her since she had first met him.

She could not for the life of her figure out why she felt the way she felt about him. More over, how did she really feel? Oh God, more analyzing on her part. Self analysis was worse than anything because you could never come to a decisive conclusion about things. You could think, re-think and analyze till the cows came home and pigs flew, but in the end, you would come up with the same conclusion; which was: no conclusion on anything.

She had gone through this all day in her mind. Her head had hurt from the thinking of this. She went for a long walk on the beach trying to clear her head somewhat, stopping to throw a Frisbee for a cute cuddly pit bull. Were pit bulls deemed cute? Now she was getting redundant with herself. She gave up. It will be what it will be. But? Wasn’t it because of her it was like this? She sighed.

She didn’t have time to do this. Not now. She’d had weeks to get this out of her system, and should have done that by now. Unlike everything else..no, wait. She did put off everything else, didn’t she? No, she didn’t. Just this. But it came to crunch time now. Zero hour. And still her mind wasn’t made up.

It would be she thought. When the time came this time, it would be.

The storm had quietly with all its’ fury snuck up on her, pouring the cold rain out of the sky all at once it seemed. Actually, it had sprinkled off and on for a while, but she never noticed. Wrapped up in quiet repose she was, contemplating the events of the night in her mind. Going over things, how they should be, how they should play out, what should be said. But life, unlike her mind was never that cut and dried. Life unlike her mind was unpredictable and out of her control.

So, what would it be she thought as she made her way back to the cottage? Would tonight be the night they she fully gave in after all this time? Or would tonight be the night just like any other when he came here?

She smiled wickedly, and made up her mind. Wow. It was just that simple. Just like that? All this time and all she had to do was..give in …to herself? Then she realized. All this time, she was fighting with herself, and not him. Her feelings about herself, and not the feelings about him. Guarded always with her emotions, fear of getting too attached, giving too much, not being reciprocated where the heart was concerned.

The walk in the pouring rain did her soul good. It felt so good on her face as it ran down her neck and onto her ample breasts. Her long brown hair hung in locks down her back almost to the eye of Horus tattoo on the small of her back.

Her feet were covered with sand, and when she got to the porch, she sat on the step and let the water from the roof wash them off. It felt refreshing to have it splatter on the tops of them.

She got up, and went into the house. The air in the living room had turned a little less warm, as the breeze from the storm was wafting through the open windows. The white muslin curtains blew making shapes on the dark blue walls of the room.

She walked on into the bathroom and took off her wet clothes and threw them in the hamper. She went to the bedroom, pulling out a tiger striped spaghetti strapped negligee to put on after her bath. She would make tonight special all the way around for him.

She turned some music on. Mozart’s sonata no. 11 in A minor was playing. She loved the melody of the piece, how it was soothing and exhilarating at the same time. She smiled as she thought of dancing the waltz to it, being spun around and around on the dance floor.

She started to twirl in the bedroom, hands out, eyes closed to the music letting it engulf her body, letting go for just a bit, feeling free for just a moment in time. She started laughing at her actions, thinking to herself how silly she must seem right now. All the tension in her body had left with the making up of her mind.

She went on to draw the bath of hot water, never noticing the light on the answering machine blinking….one missed call…