Love note to shy girls everywhere

Hiding where only the shy can find me. What shy eyes say that words can’t. Those are the words she longs for. Words like “stay”. Words like “yes, I do.” Words that mean, “You’re beautiful”, without ever needing to say so. Those words. Words that hide in a cup of peppermint tea, a glass of red wine. Words that even silence can’t bear to touch.

I found my words curled up behind your ear, nesting in the evening of your hair. I felt them folded underneath your breast. Your words seek the unseen as it aches to be seen. Your words are tangled up in afternoon breezes, windchimes, skin. You are so far. Let these words make what we cannot. Love.

Love is a blindfold, or is it words. Where are you.

I am the jingle in your pocket you think are keys. I am the whisper on your earlobe that is the breeze. I am in the unthought thought. The unsaid goodbye, the dry eye. I am the yesterday that refuses to leave. The tomorrow that does not come.

The tomorrow that does not come is the never that forever arrives, and love knows well this wild ride. So throw away your maps. This love has no destination. The journey is all. We leave in the morning, shy girl. Let us leave as soon as the first robin begins to sing, not before. And let us not wait for it to finish its song.

(To shy girls everywhere: you are the one that I want.)

 

 

*This post is a compliation of a series of tweets back and forth between @mentalexotica & Olivia Dresher. You can follow her on Twitter (and you really should) @OliviaDresher and have a look at her blog: http://www.OliviaDresher.com

Fever

 

 

I never forgot your smell,
or how soft your cheek was;
like tender coconut flesh.
How soft your cheek was,
when I dared to push my lips against it.

I never forgot how
my back pressed against the wall.
Green, cold, flaky paint.
I remember trying to remember the moment
the hot flush of love against the cold of the wall.
The memory lives, grows, sears.

It is a fever. You shudder, you sweat.
You want to lie down, you need to sit up.

Yes, a fever. A fire that’s burning me up.
A fire that won’t listen to reason.

I will be your phoenix, you can be my arsonist.

Scarlet lips to burn you, flushed cheeks to burn you.
Here, inside of me, is a living arsenal.

A veritable, flammable woman;
you will keep me alive with flames of longing.

That first spark has grown,
brighter now, bolder now.

Your lips are under my thumb:
trembling pink flesh. Now wet with wanting,
now parched in anticipation.

Fan my flames, for I need you, to make it through
this stark and lonely night.
Touch your tongue to mine, quench this longing.
Nay, stay away, lest all turn to ashes.

There is a desperation in this denial. A quiet hunger.
A spasming want.
I will wait. I will make you want me.

(Written with @URM1)

“I think I am going to have a glass of wine. While I cafuné* you.”

“Here is the end of choice. [...] And what is choice except uncertainty of what we are?”

 

I love the romance of you. The somewhat ambiguous nature of you. I love your knowing. Your silent, stoic firmness. Your obduracy. I love the vulnerabilities. The moments of softening. The fleeting times in which you allow me to see you weaker. I smile at how you are reticent when I am forward. How the mention of my need for your lap to lay my head upon is met with a quiet, steely reserve.

And how you say the most staggering things to me (“I stand among those that love you’, for instance) with an almost careless elegance.

I love how simple and straightforward it is – to love who you are without needing to possess you. You tell me I am irresistible. And I tell you that you are impossible to not want. Or love. Impossible.

I give up.

My love is not a needy love. It will not beg at your door for scraps of time or attention. It will not need to be fed to live. My love for you is not a desperate, pleading, pulling love. It is patient. It keeps itself occupied. It makes trips to the market, visits the museum and goes to the shop on days you have no time for me.

My love is not a sad, morose love. It will not waste away in morbidness. It does not meddle in the maudlin. It is always a little bit drunk, this love; intoxicated by you.

My love is not sober.

My love is simple. My love is complex. My love is easy to understand because it is mine. It is impossible, because it is yours. I will sit with you and watch the daffodils sway, bobbing like headbangers at a metal concert. My love will be so bold as to take your hand to my cheek and let it rest against my palm. But not so brazen as to lick the wiped chocolate sauce off your fingers. My love is shameless. If they ask, “who is this woman to you? What do you share?” I will answer, “she is my beloved. I am a lover. She shares my my mind, my thoughts, my heart, my skin, my bed, my time on this earth.”

And anyway, it is none of your business.

My love is gentle and knows the language of silence. I will leave you to your days of solitude and return when beckoned by a loving hand. I will learn to read your lips and say nothing in response to the quiet.

My love is yours, if you so choose.

*Cafuné: From Brazilian Portuguese, meaning to tenderly run one’s fingers through someone’s hair.

I went fishing for stars

She said:

There is such joy, in seeing and being seen.

Celebrate with me. Join me outside, open wide your arms so that your heart can follow, and turn to face the sky (I have reason to believe it has been waiting for a chance to kiss the overwhelming beauty of your smiling face).

To which she replied:

I did it. I went outside and stood in the quiet street (such a rarity in this bustling, splitting-at-the-seams, overpopulated country). I closed my eyes and reached my arms out and above me almost asking the earth for a hug. It felt a little bit like fishing; throwing your net wide over the sea almost snagging the horizon. When you do that, when you throw open the net of your heart and dare to trust the Universe, you will never go home empty-handed.

When you throw the net over the sky, you are bound to catch stars.

That is what happens when you see a falling star, didn’t you know? Stars don’t just drop out of the sky. When you see a falling star it means that someone has been starfishing, and has struck it lucky. You should try and catch it if you can; not to keep though. But so you can give it back to the rightful starfisherperson.

They say you can only catch stars at night, but I don’t think that’s true. They are always there. Just because we can’t see them doesn’t mean they’ve gone. Besides, it is always night somewhere in the world. And that means it’s someone else’s turn to catch their star.

I threw my heart open that one night. I did not think it would snare the tail of a mermaid that lived on the moon. I did not think I would catch something as quiet or as brilliant as you.

And then she responded with:

I did it.

I went out to the fields and stood still, silent and with my eyes closed for a while; listening to everything in and around me. All of me pounding: chest, knees, temples, tongue; my breath growing ever so heavier with excitement for life.

I waited. (Only to prove that I still remember how to wait). Arms stretched out, chest drawn forward, I waited. And when I was certain that the yell had grown in me, when I could feel my nape surrender and the possibility of exhaling was no more, I opened my eyes.

Laughter. To my surprise, laughter was all I had. The simplest, most natural form of gratitude.

And then the swoosh of a flock of starlings ripped the sky above me as they flew out to meet the approaching storm.

For a Soundless Mermaid

What does a woman from the sea sound like?

 

The Little Mermaid had a voice that had no equal in the world. It was a voice that was sacrificed at the altar of love.

I remember the fairy tale and I think to myself, a woman from the sea must sound like clear blue skies and glistening green foam. She must have a voice that contains the hush of eight hundred billion fish whispers and the strains of Neptune’s trumpets. She must possess a sound that encompasses the light of the moon and the turn of the tide. From her voice, you will know that, as a child, she was cradled in the arms of Poseidon.

And if you were to kiss her, your lips would taste the salt of her sweet tongue.

~

I imagine your voice to be quiet. Maybe even a little raspy. I imagine it is a dark sound that is surprisingly light on its feet. Now here. Now gone. Pirouetting, but in the shadows only.

I imagine yours is a voice that enters a room taciturnly. Nobody notices. But when it leaves, everyone stirs in a knowing that something has shifted, something has left. It is gone and the air is colder.

I imagine your voice is slow. How sweetly it hesitates to volunteer a sound.

There are worlds, entire universes, in one voice. Especially when it is a voice you come to love and recognize as belonging to you.

 

 

For a soundless mermaid draped as a dervish (in burgundy) - @sivirika

 

 

Image: The Little Mermaid by Annie Leibovitz

Why I love… In the mood for love

“This lyrical beauty, almost archaic.”

I am listening to you. And I am agreeing.

“The sway of the hips, the look. Where does it happen except in this magical, fictional space?”

The intense deliberation. Each look towards and away.
Each inhale of smoke & exhale of defeat.

The crushing elegance of it all.

“The hand brushed away. The hand grasping with an emboldened spirit. A knowing, only for the insider.”

 

 

*all italicized quotes belong to @Quicksilwr

For she who comes from the sea

It is a cliche, and I wish I knew how to say it better but I don’t.

I love how you write.

Words on a page become pictures. The word ‘bird’ turns into a feathered creature swooping down into the word ‘river’, which now flows intrepidly, confidently into some unseen turn into the trees. I could see the hummingbird and then the wasp. And before I had the chance to marvel at how serendipitous this meeting was, I saw your children-whom I imagine are beautiful, of course-children usually are, no?

This is what I mean. When I write, I describe. When you write, things transform. And so I want to know what it is to write with you. I think it will be like dancing, but with words. Letters; consonants and vowels prancing across the floor of a white sheet. Punctuations cutting in, asking for the last dance.

You’ll see. We will dance, you and I.