I wasn’t ready. I wanted to say yes. I wanted to say no.

I had to say yes.

I couldn’t bear to see her reaction if I denied her.

Not again.

I still wasn’t ready, but I didn’t care. She took two steps into the kitchen. I grabbed her close. I didn’t think. I didn’t analyze. I let all my passion, all my love, speak through my lips. She smiled.

“Someone’s in a better mood today.”

I didn’t waste words. Or time. I grabbed her hand and led her to my bedroom.

***

I had expected a quick, tender peck, but I was wrong. She grabbed my face in both hands, a move I would come to adore years later, and went in for a passionate kiss, her vivacious tongue searching for mine, only to meet an impenetrable wall of teeth. It was awkward and embarassing. We laughed. We had known each other since we were fourteen. We were now 24. It was our first kiss.

***

It should have been instinct, something biologically hardwired into me.

It wasn’t.

I had to actively fight to turn my brain off, let my emotions take hold. I wasn’t entirely successful.

Am I kissing her right? Does she like my hands on her ass like this?

I didn’t know.

And it didn’t really matter. I didn’t know what I was doing, but she clearly did.

She pulled my pants off, and I had to fight the urge to pull them back up. I was terrified, embarrassed, and a little ashamed. There wasn’t much time to process those feelings, though. By the time my pants fell on the carpet, she had me inside her mouth.

***

Never could I have believed that I would find myself, in my apartment, alone, sitting across from her, laughing and talking.

It was an unusually cold morning. Lazy beams of sunlight peeked through the blinds. We could hear the landscapers moving and trimming the bushes two stories below us. Not that it mattered. As far as we were concerned, it was just us, and only us, right there, in that smooth leather couch.

Between her full time job and her school work, she seldom had free time. But there she was. With me. Fourteen years after our first meeting. Five years since I had told her I loved her. Four years since we had kissed for the first time.

“I’m tired,” she said, stiffling a yawn.

Foolishly, naively, I believed her. I knew how hard she worked, how busy she always was, how much she pushed herself to be all things for all people. I was always worried about her health. I offered her my bed, happy in the belief that she would be able to get some rest. She got up and stretched. I pointed towards my room and she headed towards it. I watched as her beige shawl swayed with her every step. I smiled.

Fourteen years. To have a moment like this. It was worth the wait.

She went inside my room.

The droning hum of a leafblower drowned out the chirping birds. Her perfume lingered on my side of the couch.

My phone chimed. It was a struggle to remove it from the pocket of my tight jeans. My heart dropped as I read the text she had sent:

“Come join me.”

***

I didn’t like it. At all. Which surprised me, given every movie and TV straight man’s obsession with the blowjob.

In truth, I couldn’t wait for it to end. After a few moments, she got up, removed her blouse, and tossed it aside. She reached behind her, unclasped her bra. As the tension relaxed, the straps slipped off her shoulders, slightly revealing her breasts.

It was a surreal moment.

There she was, a woman I had loved for over ten years, her nearly bare breasts looming over my half naked and fully erect body.

***

She was nestled beneath my sheets, her shawl on the ground. I laid next to her.

“Hi.”

I looked into those light, cerulean eyes.

“Hi.”

She pulled me close and kissed me.

I was prepared this time. Not that it helped.

I was self conscious to the extreme. Sloppily and awkwardly, I returned her kisses. I tried to explore her body with my hands, but was too shy to get very far.

“I’m not tired, by the way,” she said with a smile.

“I figured that,” I replied, with an equally big smile.

We rolled around on the bed, as though we were playing a game of tug of war, and our bodies were the rope.

“I’m ready,” she whispered once. I understood what she meant at once, but ignored it

“I’m ready,” she whispered twice. I wasn’t ready. I wasn’t prepared for this.

She gently pulled me away from her. She told me what she wanted.

I told her no.

At the time, and still even now, I had never seen such disgust in anyone’s face.

“Ok, then. I won’t waste anymore time here.”

She picked up her shawl and rushed out of the door. I called out to her, but she didn’t listen. I didn’t bother to chase after her.

***

She fully slid off her bra and let it drop to the floor.

“Do you have a condom?”

“No,” I said, not betraying the utter relief I felt inside.

Thank god. We’re done here. It’s over. No way she wants to do this without a condom.

“Oh, sweetie.”

The dissappointment in her voice was palpable.

I let out a sigh of relief. I think I might’ve actually ran my hand over my forehead, wiping imaginary beads of sweat.

Then terror set in. As I had heaved my sigh of relief, as I had wiped my forehead, she had bent over, removing her underwear.

She crawled over me. For her, I was one of many. To me, she was my first. I could feel her warmth. We were 28. Her breasts pressed against my chest as she leaned into my ear and whispered:

“How do you want me?”

#Love #Nonfiction

When she undresses herself for you, for the first time, you beg your eyes not to stare at her shoulder blades which stick out like cut off wings. Because you’ve been taught that loving a woman relates to brutality in the bedroom and you don’t want to love her the way that men have loved you because you will not let this love become something that greedily takes and leaves no after thought.

So you’d go eons without pressing your body against hers and a lifetime without grazing her bare skin with the tips of your fingers because loving someone doesn’t justify killing them and then easing your innocence by carving a headstone that reads here lies a predator, who made light of all the blood that comes from making a sport of trying love a woman like a man.

And your hands won’t stop shaking hands when she undress herself so you turn away but she grabs your hand and proclaims “No you won’t hurt me.” You let out a breath that you didn’t know you were holding in because she means it and you crawl under the covers. Her lips pressed against mine and hips to hips as her fingers trace my collarbone, and down admist seas.

Sometime later in the night while you sleep, she lies awake stroking your honey colored hair wishing that someone had taught you that sex and love can coexist without mortality. You dream, she has wings again.

I had a dream that I was

Trapped in a cave,

Scraping and screaming

At its damp walls.

Heart racing,

Sweat tracing

The edges of my eyes that

Were teased by the trickling

Of light beaming from the

Roof of my cage...

And I thought of you.

I smelt the fear,

Tasted the hate,

Felt the shake

Coursing through the veins

Of the body you claimed.

I extended my arm,

Fingers spazzing,

Blindly grasping,

Until I felt him.

Warm. Steady. Safe.

I pulled myself into him,

Tucking my head

Into the nook of his neck,

Matching my breath to the

Slow rise and fall of his chest.

I knew he was waking

By the fluttering

Of his eyes.

He kissed my nose,

My mouth,

My neck.

“You’re beautiful,”

He whispered.

And I believed him.

_____________________________________________________________________

This is my first entry. Thanks so much for reading!

Warning* sexual content

i want your hands

all over my body

slowly caressing the cravesses

and valleys of my quaking skin

dip your hand in my milky universe

and lick the mountains that form on my chest.

I want you to hold those stars

that flicker in my misty vision

let the air trickle down

our spines

and our moans fill the night.

hold me

tight

let our bodies

ride to infinite heights

yell my name

and whisper with wet lips

to my ear

how much pleasure I make you feel.

grip me

choke me

I am all yours

kiss me

love me

make me feel more

trace your lips

along my neck

and push against

my thick throbbing thighs

ill take you in

this pulsing pleasure

as I drown in the waves

of ecstasy.

Please just

make love to me, baby

(ill go on all fours)

becuase, luv,

I am all yours.

She sat caressing the fruit in the curves of her hand; luscious and naked, the mango sat tantalizingly. She could feel the golden–orange flesh seeping through the windows of her fingers. There was no distance between what she was going to taste and her. She sunk her teeth and then her lips into the sun-kissed sweetness.

It was counter-intuitive to experience divinity through the senses, but that moment couldn’t lie to her. The juices of the mango pulp ran down her fingers in sticky streams, and she licked them off in childlike pleasure. Her eyes were in love with the mango. She ate around the seed. Demolished the peels and sat in awe of how she felt. Satiated.

She looked up to the skies and wanted the rain to release the stains glued to her cheeks and lips. She hadn’t ever eaten so boldly and without inhibition. The rain did as it was told that day. It landed on her pleasure-warmed cheeks and washed the remnants of her sins away. She knew at that moment that she had the immeasurable pleasure of living fully. Head stoked to the sky, she laughed, a deep-rooted smile radiating from her insides.

Even for just that moment, she had lived.

I was a child when I entered a new country.

All through my life I have been a child at heart,

And that has saved me.

I have thawed winters,

And revived the dying.

My reign was golden.

I was nearly a lioness.

I sailed to the edge of the world,

And I have spoken with stars.

No one has felt a parting as painful as mine,

But no longing hope burned as brightly,

For the day when I would see You again.

"The less full of ourselves we are, the more room we have for other people."

I'm not sure where I remember seeing this quote, or who it is attributed to. It has revealed many layers over the years. On the surface, it reminds us not to be full of ourselves. Digging a little deeper, we ask ourselves, "full of what?", "who are the 'other people'?"