Unquiet Waters

a little love in dark times

It is that kind of day;

where the air is breathing,

the walls are sweating,

and the streets judge you.

It is a day where rains threaten

but do not come; one is

forced at such times

to create one’s own rhythm,

even as we watch the boats

almost turn over on the

rough surface of the waters

we observe from

safer distances than the

one we opened between us.

 

I tell you, this body

has learned how to be used

but has forgotten

how being loved shows up

in data sets and graphs and

so many PowerPoint

presentations. I say,

I am afraid you will be afraid

when you discover, I am a

hard b***h, but there is this

Other Woman that lives

in me, and she is as sensual

as a cat purring in the sun,

she is soft as a caress; she

has the warm wetness of

the South Sea, inside her

most intimate places.

 

I can live without love,

I confess- but she- she cannot.

 

And then you, bless you-

you take my hip in one hand

and my hair in the other;

just for today, just these hours,

and you say, barely more than

a whisper:

“I know, I know, I know,” and

as if a shouted command,

my body’s secrets are revealed,

one by one, and the words

ring boldly with more truth

than 2 decades of everything

I was told I deserved. 

 

The soft scared animal

in my heart stops raging

because its wounds are tended

by your truth. I open:

like a promise, like a hope,

like an impossible lotus

blooming in the Atacama.

And I want. To give you

a piece of my own forever,

but there is only now, this hour,

these sweating walls, these

opened cages, with you,

and somehow, also impossibly,

it is enough. For today.

 

Author's Note

photo is my friend's, Lake Atitlan, Guatemala.

Reviews

[Corset]

"I tell you, this body
has learned how to be used
but has forgotten
how being loved shows up
in data sets and graphs and
so many PowerPoint
presentations. I say,
I am afraid you will be afraid
when you discover, I am a
hard b***h, but there is this
Other Woman that lives
in me, and she is as sensual
as a cat purring in the sun,
she is soft as a caress; she
has the warm wetness of
the South Sea, inside her
most intimate places.

I can live without love,
I confess- but she- she cannot. "
I love the way you've described the softer self in this , the woman in need of the very reason we exist yet this world is hard and it makes her shell hard, and where is the one who can set her free and still understand that when the sun is full we must endure in this survival we call life.

[Chris]

THAT was a smile put to ink... and a wish forever sent to the winds to spread and ...return.