its own kind of freedom…

I wrote love notes of various kinds… here and there… hoping I really was seen, feeling against thinking that perhaps finally, my trust was worth giving. I thot: this is what all those story books and fairytales were trying to describe. Swept off my feet, I fell.

Too late I realized I was wrong: when you looked at me, it was not a promise, it was not a meeting of well-mets; it was a warning.

… so many love notes.

Human hearts are fragile, made particularly malleable thanks to the mind-bending heat of misguided belief. Pain births deeper understanding as it sinks into scars you believed to be healed (or, at least, healing). Blame, lies, disrespect, and silence disappears love. We become rank with longing for something that never really was.

This is the struggle to Living.
This is why we pray for blindness.
Loving the Wrong One illuminates if our soul stays open.
I see you even more clearly now but more: I see me.

the encounter…

(enchanted by this strange proximity)

Longing, and mystery, and delight…
as if from the swaying blackness
of some slow-motion masquerade
onto the dim bridge you came.

And night flowed, and silent there floated
into its satin streams
that black mask’s wolf-like profile
and those tender lips of yours.

And under the chestnuts, along the canal
you passed, luring me askance.
What did my heart discern in you,
how did you move me so?

In your momentary tenderness,
or in the changing contour of your shoulders,
did I experience a dim sketch
of other — irrevocable — encounters?

Perhaps romantic pity
led you to understand
what had set trembling that arrow
now piercing through my verse?

I know nothing. Strangely
the verse vibrates, and in it, an arrow…
Perhaps you, still nameless, were
the genuine, the awaited one?

But sorrow not yet quite cried out
perturbed our starry hour.
Into the night returned the double fissure
of your eyes, eyes not yet illumed.

For long? For ever? Far off
I wander, and strain to hear
the movement of the stars above our encounter
and what if you are to be my fate…

Longing, and mystery, and delight,
and like a distant supplication…
My heart must travel on.
But if you are to be my fate…

— Vladimir Nabokov —
translated by Olga Voronina

on lies, secrets, and silence…

An honorable human relationship — that is, one in which two people have the right to use the word “love” — is a process, delicate, violent, often terrifying to both persons involved, a process of refining the truths they can tell each other.

It is important to do this because it breaks down human self-delusion and isolation.

It is important to do this because in doing so we do justice to our own complexity.

It is important to do this because we can count on so few people to go that hard way with us.

— Adrienne Rich —

tiny, beautiful things…

I take my time undressing you. I know your eyes are on me – intent and trusting – and I resist the urge to fall into your gaze. I want to enjoy this first. I want to drink you in with my fingers. I want you to feel me devour you with my eyes. I need you to feel the tender adoration of my touch. I want us to taste the promises floating in the air.

My bold nipples brush up against the goosebumps of your cooling flesh. This whisper between us compels me to look into your eyes and softly say, “Hi.” The sound of my voice triggers ripples of pleasure down your spine, ending at the head of your cock – minor explosions foreshadowing… everything.

It’s a strange feeling, this next moment: knowing exactly what I want and having no idea what to do to get it. And so we stand before one another. So very naked. So very still. Seeing and being seen. The miniscule space between us defying physics with all that fills it. This tension is delicious. I ache with it all, too.

A new dance begins: our gazes part and return as our hands slowly trace the other’s outline – suspended in the spirit more than on our actual skin. Even though your hands don’t actually touch me, I am moved. Deeply. I feel myself warm as your hands float over and around me. The back of my hands, my palms and wrists are mirror to yours – only mine are dancing in their own tempo, swooping and divining where you most need me – those places you secretly fear I may find.

Finally, our fingers entwine and pulling me to you, your head tilts, your lips part and you kiss me. What early pause and restraint there may have been is no more. This kiss is a game-changer. This kiss removes the blinders.

You pull me in by my lower lip and then my upper. I hungrily taste your tongue and suckle you deep in my mouth. Back and forth, sweeping and searching, we are nothing short of enthusiastic. Of course, our hands now find their way around the other. You pull me so close, it’s like you’re already filling me. You feel the urgency of my own grip – against your broad back, and as your ass cheeks spread that little bit when I grasp them to draw your body even closer.

You pull away suddenly, your eyes wide, looking into me. “I can smell you!” I laugh with delight and blush. My voice husky replies, “But can you taste me?” It’s like a rubber band snaps: you scoop me up – I am light as a feather – the certainty of your desire empowers you (and fuck, are you ever glorious, my sweet).

Somehow your tongue and your fingers manage to stop Time. I know this is a bed. I know that is the ceiling above us.  But why does it feel like we are more than just a man and a woman, gasping and grasping the Mystery of (our) Pleasure?

I want to ask you this, I want to hear your sexy mind at work. But all I can do is splay my legs and grip your hair with reaching fingers. All I can do is moan and arch my back with toes spread and curled. All I can do is pant with an open mouth. I cannot speak your name even though it is the only word occupying my simple brain. All I can do is return to your eyes and then find myself transported once more.

When you finally do enter me, when your beautiful cock pumps forth my honey-wet, I am all yours. There is no one else. My hair is drenched from our exertion, your jaw clenches with the powerful clarity of our mutual need. You are so beautiful in this moment. My heart opens and in this, you choose to mirror me. My eyes tear up from the beauty of what I thought could never be.

You understand this – it spurs you on, and inspires a verve in you that I haven’t seen before. I have never felt so free. The power of your thrusts echo through our bones. The depths of my pussy’s walls begin to pulse, gripping the growing thickness you are inside me. Our silence is a thing of the past.

Our cries are feral. Honest. Pure.
This is the light that cleanses, that heals.
This, my sweet love is you and me,
Together.