~ words and picture of and by an artist friend.

It started like the roar of a steam engine, slowly climbing the curves of an imposing mountain.

Wrestling gravity.

Waiting, wanting, yearning for the descent.

The sweet enveloping green of the valley below.

Faster.

Determined.

The movement of your fingers in flawless unison with the deep groans that were my last words.

Echoing, as if the sky were a closed arena.

Our bodies bare for some unknown audience.

Fireworks.

A pull, a thrust, a perfect explosion.

She tasted like cloves and cinnamon, the last drag on a cigarette, and the opening notes to a song I’d lost to my youth.

She was iridescent and I couldn’t put her out, not even in my dreams.

This winter has been missing something.

I realized, yesterday, it’s the cold; To accommodate guests, I’ve had my heater running for the last couple of months.

Last night, I shut off the heat.

And I slept as if tomorrow was a cool blue dream.

We can measure our lives by days.

Or we can measure it by moments.

I know which I choose.

I wanted to pet you
like you were something familiar

but your hip sway
and the curved planes of sinuous retreat
that mark the passage of your ecstasy
were too sweet
a distraction

instead
I fell beside you
on the bed
and learned you
the way the birds
learn to sing
and books learn
to be still

intimate without thought

you make me want
Sunday
morning
pancakes.

With her back to me, she nestled like a slow S against my body.

“You’ll have to trust me.”

“Ok.”

I rested my hand on top of hers and guided it to her stomach, a low plane of soft warmth that was as smooth as a river. Slowly – slowly – slowly – our hands slid under the edge of her jeans and then deeper, pressing along the delta of her pelvis, fingers curling into a greeting, a beckoning; my intent ghosted hers; hands moving in unison, we pressed inside.

Back arched, her first real breath was an escape. She moved with easy grace; I caught her free hand, capturing it against her hip, fingers entwined tight. The only skin I could taste was at the alcove of her throat and shoulder; my breath was warm and in pace with our hands. I felt her low shudder like an iceberg.

…

“You said I am an iceberg.”

“No, I said you shuddered like an iceberg.”

“Sometimes my shudder is all there is.”

when your breath catches
I imagine a butterfly
caught
in your throat.

and if I listen closely
perhaps
I will hear it
flu t t er
against
your
pulse

I am the worst kind of ghost
slept into your blood
astringent
a duenna for the soul

My day was quiet; books read to the sound of rain and snow, writing to the soft strains of Tchaikovsky and Mozart.

But my thoughts were not always on the words in front of me.

There are times that the lines of desire drew my mind’s eye to possibilities.

And there, I found you.

A room lit only by the light reflected off snow and skin; hips, found under a thin veil of clothing.

I think of you utterly still.

A flash of teeth in the dark.

The top of shoulders, of spine; fingers parted, pressing against your stomach as a litany of kisses is pressed into your skin.

This is patience in need,

Because I don’t expect you to be still forever.

Today, I have a taste for the beautiful and frail; the iron within the rose; the drop of blood when pricked by the artful thorn. No rose is so defenseless.

I would collect the petals in my hands only to say I held them, once.