Month: July 2011

What happens when you stop feeding a wolf?

It gets more cunning, perversely more patient.

And hungrier.

Room by room, I have built a house.

In one room I have placed specific touchstones of memory.

Smooth stone, an invitation.

I recall a kiss in a bathroom stall; she had excused herself from her table where she sat with her friends. I caught her, and it was just a single kiss, a single hungry kiss, but it stayed with me for hours. From the first, I remember her eyes dancing for me.

Another touchstone, another memory.

I remember a thigh, found under a bridesmaid’s dress. She was well past tipsy before I took her to dinner, and on the drive home I slid my hand under the blue of her dress. We kissed in front of the house she was staying at, and we may have kissed before, but this was the kiss I remember. The warmth of her lips, how easy it all was.

Another touchstone, another memory.

A girl with dusky skin leaning over my desk. Her hips moved, an invitation, and I remember tasting her. She never stopped moving, not when my hands pressed along the back of her thighs to guide her closer, not when I threw her back against my leather chair, not when her hands became buried in my hair.

Another touchstone, another memory.

Wherever she went, so went the bells.

In bracelets wound around her ankle; woven into hair as silver tresses; placed around her neck as pendant and charm.

But I never heard them ring.

Not even in passing.

An upended carafe of courage and a view from the floor.

I counted each drip, caught the last with my eyes closed.

It’s true.

You can dance between rain spots.

You can hide amid the rushes.

You can laugh at the riches.

And spilled milk is neither spoiled nor spent.