(Another Damn Love Affair)
by HJG
I woke up from a dream of tenderness. The person in the dream was spun by imagination, but when I awoke, but when I awoke, I remembered: my real love, so tender, tracing my eyebrows, my face. I always want to use that adjective to describe him: tender. I never really had a use for that word before. It was the feeling when he touched me... so caring. cherishing. Like my face was a treasure, to be discovered and admired, but for a limited time only. Like he was a cavedweller meeting mythical Phoebus for the first time. A man who never knew thirst until he took his first drink, and then would gladly have drowned just for the joy of water.
I don’t mean to imply that I’m pure as water, bright
as the sun, or beautiful as treasure.
But that’s how he saw me, held me.
Now I’m trying to sort out how much of that night was his insides waking up for the first time, how much was the forbidden temptation, how much was the lack of sleep and the pot, and how much was genuine me-and-him fireworks, sparks, fire, desire, connection, infection, resurrection, contact, understanding, melding, gelling, hell-be-damned *emotion.*
I don’t ever want to leave that moment. I want to live
forever with my eyes closed, feeling him trace his rough fingers over my face,
feeling the electricity sing between us. Over and over again, his thumb rubbing
against my dry lips, every follicle on my body alert, my sexuality awake and
raging just under my skin, so poised on a precipice that I dared not move
for fear I would topple and lose it all— all restraint, all sensation,
all control.
So sweet... I want to go back.
Like a faerie yearning to love the intangible moonlight, we dance, forbidden— me and him, him and me, in love, in lust, intolerably apart, impossible together, in sadness and in hell, ’til the death of emotion do we part.
