EmilyHer eyes were a jagged shade of jade and her hair was thick and dark as the woods on Pemberton Mountain when the sun goes down.
She wore faded bell-bottom jeans and a Greenwich Village tee shirt, and unknowingly sported a dab of barbecue sauce on her chin.
When I pointed that out to her, she giggled...and I was smitten.
We shared a plate of pulled pork, downed a pitcher of beer, then danced and laughed till last call.
Later, we walked beside the silent Mississippi where Emily shined her glorious greens into my eyes and kissed me more passionately than a woman has ever kissed a man.
In that single, unexpected moment, there was nothing else.
There was no half-moon glinting off a quarter parking meter, no juke joints murmuring two streets over, no Canis Major leaping through the night, no muddy river to our right, and...for that moment, no wayward matriarchal ghost to my distant left.
We stood there holding hands, midnight blinking worlds away.