Lover Come Home Ch 16

Tuesday, late

Dear V

I find it hard to write tonight. I never thought you would be gone this long. My sexual body is beginning to shut down in self defense. It is like being starved for food. After awhile one is no longer hungry and forgets about eating. Until, of course, it is too late.

What will it take to wake me up? How will you feed this poor starving woman? Milk toast and tea like an invalid? No. Comfort food? Mine are meat dumplings and sour yogurt. Starving is only a metaphor anyway, and I prefer to make love when my stomach is empty. You fill my body perfectly. I do not need food when we can taste each other.

Gifts? Traditionally one returns from far away bearing presents. Not a tradition for me. It seems like appeasement or replacement. Besides, what would you give me? A sapphire broach? A good book? I want nothing with a bow around it. I have one of everything I need. There is only one.

When you return you can feed me things for my heart. I want to listen to music together, the M spiritual masters.... Mozart, Marley and Van Morrison. I want to walk in the woods. The wild grasses smell something like you, but more winey and with less stormy sky in them. I need laughter too. Can we watch Mr. Hulot's Holiday for the 1004th time?

Maybe just one or two meat dumplings, for old times sake.

And then the serious business of waking up our sleeping senses can begin. My ears are now ready to hear you murmur how deeply you want to kiss me. And my mouth is ready, open and ready. First you, then the dumpling, my dear dumpling, and then you again. My nose appreciates the various flavors of your skin, after having sampled the grasses. My eyes have followed Mr. Hulot on his vacation, they are now ready to gaze into something more serious. And finally the final sense, touch. Where will you touch my sleeping skin to begin its slow awakening to feeling?

Around my ears? It is such a silly out of the way place, yet you seem to like tracing the oval curves.

The back of my neck? It can be neglected, hidden by the long fall of hair. But you seldom forget it. You take my hair in one hand, gently twist it up and away, and then begin kissing. You begin or end wherever the mood strikes, but no small section is overlooked. Is my skin warmer there, insulated by my hair? Is that why you occasionally blow across my neck, to cool me?

Or my collar bone. You stroke it thoughtfully, does it sing some soft sound under your fingers that only you can hear?

Or that little fold of flesh just above my breasts and near my arm pit. It has no name, but it yields to your touch.

Or the palm of my hand. I feel like a Princess from Nalanda, or some other exotic realm, when you kiss the palms of my hands.

Or will you begin with my belly button. Such a funny name (is there another more serious one?) for the place where our life began. Once severed from my mother, I drifted aimlessly, feeding wherever I could. Until you came to anchor me again. You know that secret. Is that why you like to put your tongue there? To show me again that I am safe from harm, not alone, and surrounded by love.

Or will you take one of my legs in your hand, lift it up, point it at the ceiling, then bend it down so that my knee is on my chest, and then once again raise it upwards. I know what you are doing. You enjoy seeing how limber I am. You like to play with the muscles and tendons, as the ballet master plays with his dancers. You like being in control of my body. I do not lift my leg and point it to the heavens, you do. What you want, my body will do. You decide, and my body fulfills. you command and my body obeys. "With my body I thee wed," says the marriage ceremony. So true.

Or perhaps you will just kiss the inside of my knee. Another totally inconsequential place that has meaning for you and me. Raise my left leg up, bend the knee downwards, then lift the lower part of the leg up again, and kiss the exposed inner knee. While you are kissing that inner place, your fingers might run up and down another inner place.

Or, maybe you will find that elusive inner knee in a different manner. While starting to undress me, you drop down. On your knees before me you raise my skirt, and soon my knee, my thigh, my center, are yours.

Sigh

Awake, starving, and ready.

C