Orange Blossoms At Midnight (Her name is Orange)

Orange Blossoms At Midnight  
(Her name is Orange)  

     My lover woman, Rowena is upgrading her R.N. license to a Nurse Practitioner. I am studying for my B.S. in hotel, restaurant, and tourism. We enrolled to wait until the job market improves.  
     Rowena and I take a job harvesting oranges in Plaquemines Parish down the river from New Orleans. We need extra cash between semesters. We bask in an Indian Summer day.  
     We’ve had our play and it’s time to get to work. Oranges hang pendulously from trees. Shining orbs are washed in sunlight. Our faces are gilded by the sun’s rays. Rowena stands across from me plucking the fruit and dropping it into the basket. Her short skirt rides up in the cool breeze revealing her thighs, muscle-bound from hard labor.  
     She plucks ripened sun fruit from the tree. It drips, luminous with dewdrops. She says, “Here let me feed you some.” Her hand stretched out in friendship she peels the juicy delight in her fingers as I bite into the flesh with my ivory teeth. A smile illuminates Rowena’s face in the late afternoon light as I chew the sweet pulp.  
     “Mmmm. It tastes like liquid sunshine in my mouth. Could you serve me another bite?”  
     “Here you go, hungry man.”  
     We feed each other in a harvest feast, partaking of the forbidden fruit meant for grocery stores. Our faces drip with the evidence of our eating. But we are taste testing the product before it reaches the shelves. And at our slave wages, we deserve a little bonus.  
     Soon, purple ribbons stream through azure sky glistening with the bloody sun. The peach blossom sky blushes as the sun withdraws his fingers from Rowena’s tresses. She is the daughter of the moonlit earth with oranges gathered in her basket. She ties her locks into braids. A cosmic child she walks under the zodiac wheel.    
     Twilight eases slowly into darkness. Birds flutter among the orange tree boughs. The ripened juicies hang pendulously from shadowy limbs and the plum red sun sinks silently. A cold front washes in.  
     “Wow, we have this place to ourselves.”  
Rowena lights the lantern. She is illuminated like the fairy queen Titania in the magic forest. Her sleeping eyes having been sprinkled with the love potion. I am the first she sees upon awakening and she falls madly in love with me.  
     “John, have you ever imagined what it would be like to be blind?” she pours words of wonder.  
     “I once read a book about a commune of blind and deaf people. They communicated through touch” I tell her like a true bookworm.  
     “That’s what I want to do with you. I’m going to turn off the halogen lantern. Let’s close our eyes and bathe in the quiet here. Now touch me.”  
     My eyelids eclipse the light. The motion of my hands on her face is like that of a teacher holding a pointer up at the board. My hands mimic hers as we track imaginary board writing on each other’s stomachs. She presses my proffered tongue down with her fingertip like a doctor’s depressor device. My tongue wiggles under her finger. She releases my articulatory organ. I hold her chin in my hand. She offers up her neck to me while my fingers splay along her throat.  
     My fingers fan out around her jaws. She slips my buckle apart just enough to make my heart skip a beat. She slips her thumb between my lips as though corking a wine bottle for later drinking. She makes love to my mouth with her thumb. I suck on her digit like a candy cane. She pulls out long enough for me to breathe. Then, she pushes her thumb into me all the way. After a quick thrust, she releases me once more.      
     I feel her hot breath brush my neck. I reach behind her and follow the small of her back to where it dips into the mystery. Her breasts rise and fall as my breath deepens. She takes my hand and places my palm between her breasts. My heart beats like a sparrow fluttering in the dead of winter. She guides my hand down to her stomach where I probe her navel. She breaks the silence with a giggle.  
     I play her like an otter as my hand bathes against her arm. She invites me to swim in deeper water with her conspiratorial kisses in the sweet darkness. My eyes are closed in Buddhahood.  
     She lays her hands upon my head to comfort me with the flutter of her silken fingers. My hands roam her bluesy shoulder deltas. Her husky moan makes my heart pound.  
     Suddenly she pulls the strap out of my belt loop and undoes my buckle along with my jeans button. She strokes the area known to Japanese Buddhists as the hara where the elixir to the ocean of vital energy is two inches below the navel. Soon the heat defies the wintry cold. She turns the lantern back on.  
     She is illuminated like the fairy queen Titania in the magic forest. Her sleeping eyes have been sprinkled with the love potion. I am the first she sees upon awakening.  
     Hence, she gathers up her skirt and dances an Irish jig to the tune of an imaginary accordion. She cackles a duet with a crow cawing overhead. With her bounce, the stars in my eyes glitter like those over Mississippi in the boyhood which passed me by.