i can’t write about him

he means more than words

i went to bed naked

and awoke without my thoughts

I broke the door.

I reached my arm up in search of something to grab, to steady myself, as my legs began to give out.  I lost track of where I was. I just knew I was safe and my body was on fire, and my legs were going to give out and I would end up on the floor. My hand came down upon the door stopper. The little rubber thingy that prevents the door from slamming into the wall. I grabbed it, because that’s all I had to grab to steady myself. I didn’t even realize what I was grabbing onto. My thoughts were focused on other things.

I guess I grabbed too hard, or pulled down, because it snapped off, clean, completely and my arm fell and it dropped from my hand onto the tile with an ugly clunk that pierced the otherwise silence I had fallen into. The noise caused me to open my eyes to see what fell from my grasp. It made no sense. I had no idea what just happened. All I could focus on was the man kneeling in front of me and the heat rising through my body. My back resting against the hard wood door; my legs spread wide for balance and access; my hand still desperately trying to find something to help steady myself found the top of his head. He briefly looked up before my hand pressed his head back into me.

I was lost again in his mouth and hands, and his eyes that I occasionally noticed looking up at me. It might have lasted twenty minutes or five hours, I had no sense of time. I was unprepared for the way my body was responding to him. My mind was clear except for the feeling of heat consuming me and the wet dripping down my legs. His fingers explored deeper, harder and I sat into his hand and mouth moving with him.

It happened hard, almost without warning. My legs and stomach muscles tightening, head back, eyes startled open before closing again, moaning, primal, release. He took it all from me, into his mouth, his hand, down my legs and all over the tile.

He didn’t stop and my foot slipped in the puddle I created on the floor.

“You have more for me,” he urged.

Standing, pressing himself against me, crushing me against the door, his fingers never leaving me as I began to shower the floor with more of the pleasure he was creating. His mouth was everywhere on my lips, neck, his teeth on my shoulder. I could taste myself on his face and smell myself on his skin. I felt everything. Every pore open and accepting this new pleasure. My mind was completely clear of everything except him.  I was there, living in the moment. Not steps ahead or lagging behind. Right there in the present, living, alive.

I opened my eyes to realize he had stopped and he was watching me, smiling. The cocky smile of understanding. His knowledge of the affect he had on my body and the struggle I was having to bring myself back from where he had taken me. Shyly I dropped my eyes and hid my face in the collar of his shirt to breath him in and try to crawl into his skin. He was covered in me and I couldn’t get close enough.

He broke free of my trembling body, reached down to the floor and picked up the broken piece of door. Eyes dancing he looked at me.

“You broke the door.”

The reflection

Of what could be

What once was

But will never be again

And a vision

Like the soft kiss

Of a warm breeze

Unexpected caress

The possibilities

Elusive and gray

From the flash

Through the mirror

Distorted

It’s there, in the closet under the stairs. Covered by blankets, at the bottom of a copy paper box, shoved as far back in the closet under the stairs as possible. There is no need to hide it. But I do. I fear the words that dance across each page; choreography of memories I really shouldn’t visit too often. I don’t want to forget, but I also don’t want to be reminded.

I’ll go weeks without thinking about that box. Today I opened the box and dug under the blankets. I felt the worn leather against my fingertips and pulled it from it’s hiding place. I sat there, under the stairs, clutching my old journal, volume two (I know this because volume two is the only one that is leather, a gift). Two old floppy disks, three cards from flower arrangements and a typed note fall from the journal as I open it.

I pick up the letter and begin to read. If I unfold and refold it too many more times I fear it will begin to rip on the crease. His old familiar typewriter words fill the page. He always typed me letters on his old typewriter. I wonder if he uses a computer now or still the old typewriter. I can almost recite this letter by heart. This is the only one I ever kept from him. The rest I couldn’t handle having around, it hurt too much. But this one, no matter how much pain it causes, I can’t part with it. He is a multi talented man, and one of his main talents was stringing words together in a way that touched me and excited me more than any other man had the ability to do. I’m a sucker for a wordsmith. And he is a professional.

We had this spot, he and I, a bench that faces what he and I referred to as “our” temple. Our place of unity and devotion, in the middle of one of the most beautiful spots in the city, a beautiful cemetery. A place home to the end of life as we know it. This is where our love grew. I felt so at peace there. If I close my eyes, sitting here under the dusty stairs, I can feel the cold stone bench beneath my legs. I can feel him sitting beside me and I can see his face and the sun creating a halo around his beautiful white hair. I can taste his lips and tongue and feel his arms around me. I can also feel the pain of that weekend. The weekend that prompted the writing of this note, yellow and fragile in my hand.

As I open my eyes they fall instantly upon the page to the lines that made me weep all those years ago. “You really are what you are when you are in my arms. It is astonishing to hold and to behold, and I will never surrender you.” 

The room was dark, except for the lights illuminating the band and a path to the bar, behind me a door. The door I used to enter the room. The image of his eyes, dancing, drinking me in, moved with me through the door and imprinted itself permanently in my thoughts. The music from the band pulled me to the edge of the dance floor, across the room from where I entered.  Away from the door separating me from the eyes I could still feel on my skin.

The excitement of the encounter was obvious, or so I thought. The touch of his hand, his eyes lingering over me, the flush of heat in my face, I worried everyone around me saw my reaction to him. I watched his mouth as he spoke, as he smiled when he looked at me. Did no one else notice his eyes never left mine?

Upon returning from the bar, plastic cup filled with cheap beer in hand, I was pulled out onto the dance floor. Surrounded by my friends, all of us unable to keep still when music fills a room, my body began to move. Dancing, always a part of my life, like a drug, a need, where everything around me melts away and I am lost. I don’t think about what my body is doing, it knows what to do and how to feel the music.  Time on the dance floor is always appreciated by intoxicated men. And they are always impressed by my ability not to spill a drop of beer.

The band pumped out music familiar to all of us. We sang along, and I continued lost, in the music, in thoughts of the man standing on the other side of the door. The door, mocking me, beckoning me back into the hall, for another look, just to make sure what I experienced was real. Losing myself to the music, body moving without thought only feeling, I tried to ignore the door, ignore the eyes, ignore everything around me but the music. I tried to focus on my body, on the hot tattooed singer in the band, anything, nothing. But the pull was too great and without realizing it, I glanced up, through my hair that had fallen over my face, toward the back of the room. He was there, standing, just inside the door, watching me. From across the room his eyes burned my skin. I couldn’t see his eyes, but I felt them. His body relaxed, casual, watching me.  I turned from the door, feeling his eyes, imagining his smile. My body was now responding to him, for him. He wants to watch, I’ll give him a show.  

Reality can be an unpleasant punch in the face sometimes.

I need my escape.