The sum of us

Good Girls don’t write about sex

Overtly

They disguise their want in paralipsis

And allegory

Hoping the one they wrote it for

Reads in between watery lines

Just as we think we know and we don’t know

How to play a violin to life

What specific string to rub dulce, with bow and how?

To produce the exact sound

Of heaven

For we rely on machines purchased

In stores that wrap them in paper and

Blush behind their make-up

To soften the blow of loneliness

They even offer them in pink with ears.

I decided long ago to

Forgo batteries and think of you instead

With my flesh and my bones

Nothing more but those images in my head

Of you lying back unclothed

Ready for feasting

I’m long past apologizing

For my need at midday to think

About sex

Women do it too

Maybe not in the office bathroom with a magazine

Or tiny screen zooming in

But quieter, and softer, lying in the bath

Lights out, candles giving off waxy

Myth

The world is changed outside and we

No longer obey fluorescent lights

I dim ours and the moon in turn

Shies from long curtains

In dusk I see the curves of you

Reminding me, as if I needed reminder

Of why I think of you all the long day

And how and in what ways

For I don’t believe there will be a time

I’ll stop boiling my blood in imagining

And the moment we come together

Is ever more for waiting

It seems at times I wait, more than I actually find

Perhaps the rejoinder of fantasy is

We can inhabit it more, than what lies real

Yet as you undress, I know

Nothing I can conjure up, can compete

With the real feel of your skin against mine

The human touch of our hands enjoined

I may be called creative, but I could never

Describe those pleasured hours well

We are it seems, beyond all living illustration

For beauty when it is actual

Is not the plastic doll on the shelf

Nor her vibrating friend, who promises

To get you off so easily.

Some things are worth waiting for

Some people are necessary, chasing eternal

For even one night with you, would suffice

Against a hundred with someone else

I cannot replace what you do to my heart

Every time I see you turn a corner

And smile that crooked smile of yours

Eyes glinting, a little cocked half walk, half run

We meet in our dreams

We stay together when apart

It is the sum of us

We add up

Even as everything else

Does not

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Girl of honey

You have been in my mind

A very long time

I wonder how long it takes

For a persistent, returning thought

To gain permanence

Some part of me, an echo of some part of you

Even if one way, even if you have no idea, even if I am one of many

There’s something lovely about how I feel about you

As if I alone can see the greater things that make you

As if I had power to reflect you out into the world

Give substance to the emotion of being enthralled

A smile you cannot describe, a neck as delicate as a flower stem

From those secret recesses, an unfurling of more

I’ll never share all I see, when you aren’t aware of being observed, thinking yourself invisible

Or how many times you make me wince

Just imagining

How it would be if you returned

Even a tenth

Even a fifth of what I feel

If you could see me and long to

Wipe that errant strand from my brow

Take my hands in yours until they warmed

Cold hands, warm heart

Your mittens clammy with frost and body heat, you stand apart needing nothing, least of all me

In my imagination, our roles reverse

It is your chest that swells

In my proximity

Your blood rushes to your cheeks

When I look up into your caramel eyes

Eyes that remind me of sunlight

Poured through honey

Disapproving lips I want to touch with my own

It physically hurts

To think of you like cross hatches made with sharp knife on skin once able to be without

I could draw out my longing to lay beside you

Trace lines I am unfamiliar with until I know them as destinations

I thrive when you enter my heart and set it alight

Is it ever too late? Is it ever no longer necessary?

To raise you above them all

To need to follow you where you go

In the silence of time, you blaze

With my ever sustaining regard

Never as simple as; just something about her (although there is JUST SOME THING ABOUT YOU)

Not as easy as; do not take a chance

Hesitation has thrown herself away in fits

Made this the hour, I do something

To show what I always felt

Watching you then and now

Years in-between, no time, no space

Desire will be the last to survive

The heart is certain

Even as dreams may doubt their endings

We swim, eyes fastened on shoreline

The outline of you emerging, full and complete

Against ever changing background, your cruelty

Just a defense, used forever

Until there is no need.