Tag: love

• aphrodite’s delight

  here i am with you in the morning

  dusky dawn

  warm breath

  legs intertwined

  under cotton sheets

  rosyfingered

  sun on skin

  aphrodite’s delight

  overtaken, am i

  with love for you

  softness, curve, bend and flow

  the dip of your hip

  the way

  your belly

  fits against mine

  soft skin. tender. mine under morning light.

  November 20, 2020

  love, poem, poetr, sapphic, writing

  ---

• Ariadne

  I told him I was going to the store for a gallon of milk. I’d used it all on pancakes, you see. Breakfast foods were his favorite. I think it had something to do with his mother and the way she died. I did go to the store. I didn’t get milk. I got a bag of pistachios, a can of Coke, and a box of tampons. Then I got in the car and I kept driving in some direction away from his house. Our house, it was at one point. It wasn’t about him. This isn’t his story. Nothing was wrong with him, not really. But I didn’t want it anymore, that apple pie life. I wasn’t very good at it, apparently. I thought I was alright, making beautiful cakes and keeping the house clean and staying rosy cheeked and bright eyed. But try as I might, I was unable to produce the 2.5 children necessary to complete our picket fence world. I could feel the eyes of the other women on me at every church social, judging me for the emptiness of my womb. I myself felt no loss or absence. Just embarrassment. Guilt. Always guilt. 

  I couldn’t apologize enough to make up for being a half-woman. What else could I do? I never learned to be anything but a wife and a mother. I was never supposed to be anything else. But what do you do when your expected identity is an impossibility? I don’t think I ever wanted anything else. I never knew what else there was to want. I didn’t know I was allowed to want things.

  Anyways, I drove for a while, I’m not sure how long. I found a park, and a creek, and I laid down in the grass and ate my chocolate bar and drank my Coke and felt a bit better. I’ll figure out the rest later. As I drifted off to sleep I had one last thought of him. I wonder if he’ll get his pancakes.

  June 30, 2020

  love, poetr, writing

  ---

• salt lick

  i want, i want, i want…

  to devour the crimson arch of her lips 

  the lazy lean of her long limbs

  i want to consume

  to annihilate

  that pure stretch of bone and sinew 

  to strip away the rude vestige of humility keeping my hunger razor sharp.

  insolent innocence—- give up and in already 

  slide to my side of the booth 

  slip those slender fingers inside the wound

  salted sweetness, burning as it goes down.

  carry me over the threshold

  sweaty hands sliding on the white satin skirt, the last trace of girlhood soon gone.

  perspiration hanging heavy on bare skin

  a veneer of manners washed away in newfound knowledge.  

  there’s something soft under my cheek.

  maybe- her hair. her worn tee shirt. the up and down of her heart, a clock ticking more regular than the one on my bedside table.

  maybe- just my pillow. maybe just my own palm, the softest resting place for this heavy head of mine.

  June 26, 2020

  love, poetr, writing

  ---

• daisy chains

  What are we to do with this sour milk, beloved?

  I think of my mother when I’m in your arms. I can’t help it.

  These, my daisy chains, feel like home. This cage of expectations is the only safety I’ve ever known.

  I’m not so sure I can give it up. I know you feel the hesitation in my touch. The guilt pooling at the ends of my fingertips as they drag, electric, down your summer stained skin.

  You asked if I believed in hell. I believe in a God. I believe in springtime, which I think is the same as a resurrection. I believe that I have a choice. And I know that that terrifies me.

  Hell is the thing under my bed. Hell is the thing hanging over my head. Hell is what I think is burning me up when I see the curve of your back and want to follow it with my lips.

  When I throw my comforter aside in the sticky pit of summer’s night, a limp pink thing suffused in sweat and tears, is that heaven or is that hell?

  Perhaps I call it purgatory, this in-between. From this murky cloud, I glimpse a heaven and a hell. Only, I can’t tell which one holds you.

  June 26, 2020

  love, poetr, writing

  ---

• It will all be so good, so soon!

  I do not presume to think myself her equal

  I am satisfied to be her complement.

  I am satisfied to have her listen to my ramblings

  I am satisfied to have her smile at me

  I am satisfied to admire the slope of her nose when she tilts her head to think

  I am far beyond satisfied to know she is mine.

  I’ve dreamed of her fourteen days in a row

  They’re not always restful slumbers

  Half the time I wake up, a damp cold seeping into my bones

  Legs caught in twisted covers

  Questions replaying through my mind like some exhausted melody

  Who am I? Who am I to her? What might I become to her?

  There are three words I am afraid to speak

  Afraid of reciprocity

  Afraid of the fact that as soon as I say them once I won’t be able to stop myself from saying them over and over again

  At the end of phone calls

  In signing letters

  In poems and portraits and just in passing time.

  I do not want to spoil it by saying too much too soon.

  Good things, like tea, take a little time to brew.

  And I will wait as long as is right, to make sure this good thing remains unbruised

  She can tie my hair up with a periwinkle ribbon and I’ll brush the grass from her lilac skirt

  The picnic basket will be stuffed with good things

  Lavender lemonade and cherry turnovers and tomato sandwiches

  The bumblebees will provide us the perfect white noise for an afternoon nap under the weeping willow

  I can’t wait to hold her hand.

  June 24, 2020

  love, poetr, writing

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