A clock is ticking.
I see your body’s outline before the hotel window. The traffic has thinned with the hour. A breeze curls the curtains, and slides across my skin like a ghostly lover.
(The only perfect love, in life or fiction, is love denied.)
Already naked, you approach the bed. Your eyes are everywhere. The part of me that’s been waiting so long for this—for us—falls upon their sword.
I am reborn into eggshell arms.
Are my breasts too small? Thighs too plump? My hips too too?
(The only perfect love, in life or fiction, is)
Your touch cracks my fear. You stroke my thighs with a blind man’s fingers. Flesh grips viscera, claws air. Your lips descend, testing a knee’s hairpin trigger. My toes twist around your lower spine. My mouth opens, chin tipping high.
Shadows, shadows everywhere.
Seconds s p r e a d
(The only perfect love, in)
Your mouth searches higher, slowing. Heat flows like a kerosene sin. Your tongue slips between my—
(LIFE)
I clutch at sheets, your hands pinning wrists. My back arches, breasts flatten. Tears squeeze from blue, blue irises. Black-hole mouths explode into
Everywhere, stars.
(The only love)
I cry your
(perfect)
name.
You hear me.
***
I push deeper inside you.
(mine)
Your hair falls around, shielding my face from the window’s cold light. Your knees spread wider, hips grinding harder.
And, softer yet.
I can still taste you. My mouth is filled with your taste. Your lips find mine.
(touch what is mine)
Tasting, too.
Your voice breathes into my ear, baptizing me not with water, but fire. An always, surrendering fire. My nails clutch at your hips, digging you deeper into me until we both touch the heart of the pain that was always there, if hiding.
I groan.
Your scream is a silent shudder.
(touch what is not mine)
I’m choking on your hair. Your long, lovely hair. The air leaks from me, and my eyes smear over with
Stars, everywhere.
(I touch what is not mine)
I push you up. Gently. Away from me. You keep me locked inside. My fingers somewhere lose your skin. I look past your shoulder, into a hotel mirror. It reflects the white of your back in a Paris dreamlight.
I do not recognize the eyes staring back at me.
I do not
(I cannot touch what is not mine.
The clock.
The clock is ticking.
17 comments:
Hi.
I apologize for being a bad blogger lately. Because of this, I do not expect your comments here.
(And after THAT post, I can see all of you breathing a big sigh of relief.)
I'll be back around soon. I hope you're all well.
You got my attention.
Sarah - This..these are marvelous. I am in awe of your ability to capture this sort of passion and inner dialogue at the same time. I don't know that I've ever read such "thoughtful" sexuality before. Beautiful, beautiful! I love that the Arrondissement is "unknown" - unidentified to protect the very, very guilty!
This transports. Oh, my!
The differences in the point of view were striking. The way he pulls away when she is thinking soul mate thoughts. So close and yet so far.
I like your sexuality writing very very much, not so much for what it does say, but for what it doesn't. Sexuality is so much better when implied than graphically imparted IMHO. You were able to imply sexuality while deeply imparting the most important parts, the inner dialogue, the illusion of intimacy, the reality of separation, the reality of intimacy, the illusion of separation. All so well expressed in your (perfect) vignette.
@ Cat:
"the illusion of intimacy, the reality of separation, the reality of intimacy, the illusion of separation"
Seriously??? How did you come up with that? Watching too much of Lil'C are you? :D :D :D
@ Sarah:
Well I've been a bad bad blogger lately too. So I guess it makes us even. But my oh, my whats getting into you ladies?
Did you read Margarets last poem? And now this. This even tops your older post "NEW". And you know how much I love that one.
Shouldn't be reading these in office. Most definitely shouldn't! :D
This was most wonder-lustly beautiful.
PS: Feeling HOT HOT HOT! :P
Aniket, who is Lil'C? Sounds like a comic book character. We INFPs are all about illusion Aniket. It can't be helped, only noticed. ;-) Ain't that right Saree?
That one just drips with eroticism. I should have read that in the evening rather than in the bright morning at the start of a day.
This is a thousand degrees. Whew...
Steve, thank you. I'm glad it struck you.
Karen, I really appreciate your comments on being thoughtful and passionate. I don't want to do the one without the other.
I thought of titling this, "Equinox Dreams" because I didn't think their dreaming state was clear enough to the reader. I wanted this vignette to be highly experimental and layered. With each of their dreams converging upon the other's, but diverging at the last moment, too, when reality truly cracked through. The parentheticals were meant to convey their disparate conscious selves, either transformed or reaffirmed.
Anyway, that was a very long, tedious explanation. Thank you, Karen. :) I'm very glad these two took you away.
Cat, I'm going to echo Aniket here. How do you come up with that??
Well, you're right. I chose the equinox for this piece, because of the soulmate idea, and because I saw this dream state as a mirror. Each reflecting onto the other-- finding the same, yet the opposite, too.
Thank you, my friend, for reading me so well.
I have to go pick up my daughter from school. Will respond to other comments soon.
Your writing is always impressive Sarah, and this is certainly no exception. I love how you give us both perspectives of this steamy scene...and that ticking clock speaks volumes. Very spicy and wonderously salacious! Intriguing first paragraph, too. A+
Aniket, I'm glad I could crank up the temperature for you. ;) I wasn't sure how this one would be received. But at least my mom's not reading it. (gulp)
Thank you for the warm (ha) words. What can I say? Paris has an effect on me, now more than ever.
Cat, illusions are lovely. But illusions and reality intersecting? Now that's worth writing about.
Charles, you're right. Evening is more fun. Thank you for the kind words here.
Rachel, you made me smile. Thanks. :)
K., It's so good to see you again!! I've missed your poems and comments.
I liked the element of the clock. To me, it represented not only time's eternal stranglehold, but the delicate, fluctuating line between waking and dreaming.
An A+?? I'll take it. ;)
Sarah - You got me engrossed right from the start! I savored every word, almost afraid to breathe in case I interrupted the lover's intimacy.
Being able to read the minds of both of them made it all the more alluring.
It's just one beautiful vignette and the fact that it took place in Paris makes it just perfect!
Sometimes the desire is too great and that which belongs to another must be taken for perfect love to be denied.
as usual, amazing.
i think it was ferlinghetti who wrote that "the act of love is its own adequate eleoquence".
not that it would stop any of us, of course. but this reminded me of that quote, i think because (as cat mentioned) of what is implied more that what is written - not in an ambiguous way, but in how you engage the reader's imagination.
the line between prose and poetry blurs in this - i love how the parentheticals are woven in, the ever-present ticking, the bits and pieces that build on each other in the most luxuriant and dream-drenched way - wow, with a capital "o".
Sarah, I know this will perhaps sound impossible, given the intensity of the scene depicted here, but I am stuck on that one line, "The only perfect love, in life or fiction, is love denied." This has spun a million thoughts, all swirling in wretched disorder. Do you know that line from Shadowlands (that the pain then is part of the happiness now)? Is there good without bad to compare it to? So can we only perceive "perfect" in the context of the worst alternative (something denied altogether)? You also have me thinking of religious notions of perfect love, and constructs like a celibate clergy.
In other words, my thoughts are all over the place!
This was exceptionally well done, and I agree with Karen and Cat about how thoughtfully you render these scenes--how you capture the subtext and nuance, the strength and weakness that compete and coexist when sex is more than just sex.
Hope your writing is going well!
Margaret, I'm so glad this sucked you in! I definitely wanted it to be psychologically intimate. As well as physically.
Mark, you're right.
Hotwire, thank you!
Joaquin, wow, with a capital "o" ranks as one of my favorite comments ever!
Thank you so much for all your splendid words. I always look forward to your comments, both for their understanding and their inherent poetry.
Jennifer, I always love it when I unleash a torrent of your thoughts! Because they often draw out meanings and implications that even I was not conscious of in writing the pieces.
Love denied is "perfect" here because it is all potential and longing, without any decay of passion dragged down by everyday. It's also a lie, and much more reflective of ourselves than sharing with another person. Which she started to feel as the lovemaking progressed.
Thank you so much for all your kind and perceptive words, Jen. I love it when you stop by. :)
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