4March 2003
Saxophone
By Zelle
The faded light in the bar accentuated the rings of cigarette smoke and dark, graceless shadows as I closed my eyes and brought the saxophone to my mouth. I didn't see the masses of people-watching with ill-disguised disinterest. To them, I was just another sax player trying to find his soul at night in a crowded room of lost causes. Their precious cigarettes and shots of liquor a momentary respite from the cold outside this haven. The liquor and nicotine they needed and women they couldn't always count on (oh, those those women, with their fox trots and cheap smiles), but the sax player was always there, and therefore taken for granted. I waited for that invisible cue, and the melody began, tentative and searching-looking for a familiar head of midnight hair that came here every night.
Then there you were.
I saw you across the bar, across the mass of sweating, groaning bodies. You walked in with that oh-so-jaded twist in your hips; sitting in the same barstool you always sat in, the same same same little black dress and stilettos. The very same heartbreaking face. You knew I was there-felt me as if I was touching you. And in a way, I was. The saxophone melted and molded under my fingers into the sweet music, like I had always imagined we would make when the days were gray. Of course, though, you never looked my way. You knew I was there, and that was enough. There was no need for visual verification. The music spoke for us. Its strains the same, they were always the same. The sadness of the incomplete, looking for its better half, was always there. And I think you knew it, too.
This constant search and melancholy that was always the stuff of life, but should never have been put into music.
It reached out to you, knowing you were the answer to a question I never asked. Nevertheless, it floated in the air between us. Won't you look my way? Looking up from your glass of tequila (the same drink as you took for granted would always be there, just like me) your eyes and mine met in a kaleidoscopic dream. It was maybe a split second, an exchange of notes in a smooth legato, and your gaze lowered again. The saxophone raised invisible arms around you, coaxing you to steal a look back-to let me see your gray eyes again. Like so many clouds on a stormy day. And sometimes, I swore, I could see heaven in there. Heaven in a writhing, billowing mass of gray. In the dim lighting, they were almost black. And then I could see the graves of so many broken dreams-trying to drown them all in liquor. Heaven was slowly slipping away and the angels were falling out of your eyes. I so longed to walk over there and let you curl up into me-keep you from your own private hell.
Such sentimental fools music makes of us all.
I could remember days, such lazy days, when the world was young and we, the conquerors. You had always looked so charming and guileless in that yellow sundress you used to own. That, of course, you had put away in your little box along with all the other toys in the attic-left to rust. You may have changed externally-may have dyed your hair a different shade, tanned a little here, grown a little there-but I still saw you and me in our field of forgotten memories. And you always wore that yellow sundress. Of course, I knew the fairy-tale was too good to really last.
But the show must go on. So the music spoke for me instead, like it had, too many times to count. Trying to remind you, bring you back somehow. I had the feeling that you were too far gone-too lost in the world to find your way back. And maybe we would not make such sweet music together after all. The song ended on a suspended note-touching on your skin like a lover. My lips lingered on the cool metal of the saxophone-golden-bronze like your skin in the sun, yet as cold as you always pretended to I walked away.
I saw you hover on the edge of that barstool. Whether to follow me, or not? That was always the question, every night the same. And always, you waited a second too late-a breath's delay, and I was gone. And you would be left to ponder on could have beens-a few more angels falling from your eyes. But you always steeled yourself up for tomorrow.I would always be there tomorrow night. Just like I had every night, and every night to come- waiting for you on the incomplete notes of my saxophone.
A/N: yea..based on this saxaphone bluesy solo I heard once..just can't remember the its by.*ponders*.I'm gonna find it and let y'alls know as soon as I do.^_^ love that song TO DEATH~!