I want to swim up by your side
Between the sheets, through the tide

Warm my toes and take me under
Through depths and air bubbles we plunder

Your skin has a flavor, but do me a favor

Avoid all the retrospections
Focus on simple satisfactions

Your nose crinkles when you stifle a yawn
The longest hour is right before the dawn

Lately
I can't fall asleep
because I can hear each heartbeat
pounding in my head
I want to touch
I want to be touched
I just want someone
to trace, place, hold
finger to lip, hand to face
playing with hair
caressing shoulders and neck
breathing in scent
charting each surface
finding a way to come close to another
as deeply and physically possible
using every sense the body has to offer
each one a method of communication
simpler than words

I fell in love with the idea of you.
You know,
that unrealistic belief that the moon is made of cheese,
that I can walk above the water,
that people who fall in love live "happily ever after".
Oh you know,
that meeting you was fate, destiny, chance-and
God I want another-
and not simply coincidence mocking and plucking my
heartstrings.
But I was terrified of the hypothesis I formed of you,
of testing the conjecture and getting appalling and
contradicting results.
Thus,
to protect the fictional character of my book,
I clenched my teeth and walked right past you.

I felt him between my thighs and my heart sang songs my mind didn't even know it knew.
Warm and honeyed thoughts fill me until I am full and I am ready to concede defeat and open myself for his occupation.

But doesn't it always?
The body delights in new and welcome sensations and the head creates them.
I could easily dismiss it all as a ballet of chemical reactions and well placed hands, profoundly meaning

"Nothing".

Because everyone knows when the heat dies down, and the temperature drops, when the passion has waned like the moon, and the tide falls, only the bare bones of you are left and there are only calcium pillars to protect the flame.

Because everyone who has loved, even as a passing thought, has been left in the wake of warring bodies to observe the aftermath.
Was the tenderness making way for lust?
Did every kiss have a drop of hard truth imbued that I missed?
Were his hands caressing shallow intentions into my sensitive skin?
Did I miss the message?
Or were my eyes too open in awe, that they had closed on the casual way his hands and lips met my own?

"And what had all this been for?" Is the question that dances on the outskirts of my mind, while the meeting of my thighs still burned, and my heart had descended into free fall.

Satisfaction? Fear? Gratification? Doubt?

Love?

The worst feeling, of course, not being betrayal, confusion, shame, or loss, but plainly, uncertainty.

Nothing hurts the heart worse than not knowing.

Won’t you slip into
the drapes of my collarbone
and nestle kissing my throat.
I’ll breathe a quiet moan
you’ll unbutton my cotton coat.

Close me inside the walls
that are dusty from lack of use
locked from adolescent abuse,
and dimmed inside we’ll retreat
to kiss where our eyes don’t meet.