She Slows Him Down

"I've got to go! Kiss me--fast!" he whispered intensely as he frenzied into his clothes. "No," she said simply, but no less intensely, her voice low and calm like a raven's iridescent feather stroked across his hearing. She took his face in her hands, her touch gentle and calm too, and he felt the hurry leave him like a fever breaking. She gave him that kiss, but slow, long, lingering, and pulled him back into their bed under the slow-turning fan.

Aw, c'mon

Don't you hide those legs from me.
A story you haven't written for me yet
is coded there on imagined skin,
and I am going to read it now.
Bristle of razor-neglect,
mosquito-bite bumps,
sock tan tell me of
preoccupations, distractions,
things that mattered more to you
than sun blaze, bugginess,
my hand running sly under your skirt:
What got a hold on you.
Where your mind was.
What I love about you.

Note for a character

Pushed away, again. An intruder? A pest? Too much of himself, by being what he thought was his best self? Too present, too available, too easy. Value, he remembered from college economics, is a function of scarcity; a strange emotional calculus. Yet he'd never known any other way than to be there. He didn't know how to be just rare enough to be treasured.

How rare? He couldn't figure it out. He only thought: They wouldn't have to push if I'd never been here in the first place. It wasn't a teenager's they'll-be-sorry-when-I'm-gone revenge or a baby boomer's It's-A-Wonderful-Life despair. It was what felt like fatigue from what felt like the work of staying and trying in his stupid way and getting it wrong, over and over. How hard could it be? It was only a matter of removing himself from a virtual world--though filled with real people, so real to him, for whom he felt real love. A decision about a pastime, not life or death. No real consequences. A quiet mouse click, not a shotgun blast. Right? But there he was, suspended between insufficient courage and insufficient cowardice, stuck in his mediocrity.

Then The Letting Go

This is the hour of lead
Remembered if outlived,
As freezing persons recollect the snow--
First chill, then stupor...

He wakes, cock hard, heart heavy, head humming full of her, of course. Overwhelming images: sight of slender body, sound of gentle but urgent voice, scent of secret skin.

In the room inside his head, others crowd around her, so much more skilled in their words and ways, and she can't help but be delighted, distracted, flattered, fulfilled by their attentions. Who could blame her? He starts to fade. It will be some time before she looks up and around and realizes he has vanished.

He would take her sweet face in his hands, wrap fingers around her graceful throat, force her to look at him, try in vain to force her to see him. He'd take her, take her, fuck it clean out of her--thoughts of all others, desire for anyone else. Pure hopeless foolishness, he knows, where desire meets despair. He fades.

And she? When she realized he was gone, would she have forgotten how he both cherished and craved her, and how she didn't mind that once? Would she understand he was vaporized by desperation and hopelessness as her carelessness flashed over him like a slow-motion silent-movie bomb blast? Would something like love in her fade along with him? Would she feel heat dissipating, coolness gathering in the room as she turned her face back to the crowd?

(Senryu)

Love, desire pulls us
across miles, meridians.
Somehow, sleep with me.

Finished

The dullness will begin
When she quits discovering you.
She'll set her coffee cup and ashtray on you
And forget she ever nestled her body against your bark.
You may not notice
Until you sense the dust
From the sandpaper she uses
To rub off your sharp edges
And smooth your rough spots.
She used to take a secret delight
In snagging a splinter on you,
Tearing up and shaking her throbbing finger,
And then offering it to your lips
To kiss it and make it better
And suck the sliver out.

(Senryu)

Voodoo dolls don't work
I've stuck the pins everywhere
Can't make her heart ache