Mothermetaphor's Weblog

I said it…

Techie that I am, I allowed my fingers to dance over the keys of my Blackberry® and I confessed.  I looked into the screen and professed my undying love.  It is at this time that I realize the vitality of the relationship I hold with Sprint and their ability to send this singing telegram.  I have taken out my heart and placed it in a text.

“Forgive me Lover, I have loved you in silence, it has been 30 days since the last I touched you…”

 The time away from you has been difficult.  As humans, we are imaginative.  What makes it worse is that I am a writer.  My mind will create the scenario that my emotions dictate.  My mind, the creature that she is will say all sorts of things.  She will hint to your beauty and conclude there is no possible way that you are without a mate.  She is like the girlfriend women often have that has no life and will give you “sound” advice on how to live yours.  She whispers loneliness into my spirit and I no matter how often I try to close her out, she is the house guest that won’t take the hint and leave.

 I begin to scribe the things that bring me closest to the truth.  I discover the truth, one that was easy not to notice.  I am in love with you.  I am afraid to say it to your face.  Will you run?  Find me a woman of the joke? Shoot down my dreams of loving you for a lifetime? 

I have drawn nigh of the point where caring of the reaction is the very least of my concern.  I realize that while the truth can hurt, it doesn’t continue to hurt.  This emotion is busting me apart at the seams.  I can no longer keep it anymore than it longs to be kept.

 With great angst I press the “send” button.  And I wait.  With every vibration of my phone my insides shake.  Could this be you?  Your response sent back over the network?  Could Sprint be sending my message of hope or hurt?

The day eclipses into the next and you are silent.  Old habits die hard and there goes my mind is going to get.  It is nearly a quarter past four when I get the vibration I’ve been waiting for.  Just as I hoped:

You love me too.

I have been absolved of my sin.  Loving you silently was wrong.  I won’t ever do it again.  I am surrendering to the feeling.  It is the path I must take to joy, to love, to you…

“God grant me the serenity…” I say under my thoughts.  I knew it from the moment I saw you.  So, this is love…If I could fall any deeper I’d fall through the earth and land in another part of the universe.  Deborah Cox plays softly in the background filling up the background of my heart’s song.  She is asking the questions my heart has been posting. 

How did you get here?

I know I don’t have it within me to travel the road to find pieces of a newly regenerated heart.  My heart…betrayer that she is, she is saying all the things I vowed to swallow and never say to another being.  I am terrified.  Some things we should never get use to. 

God grant me the serenity to accept what I cannot change…

I decide to change my mind…I decide to know this, to experience this love.  To feel it in every instance that you touch me, taste me, kiss me.  Bad habits are difficult to break, but they were made to be broken.  Doubt should be broken too.  It has no place amongst the honesty of this love I have.  It forces me to face the things I put off.  Most importantly, my ability to love & be loved.  Renee so misses that.

I will know this joy because God has it – for me.  I close my eyes for a brief moment.  I revel in the memory of feeling your love around me yesterday.  Hands, feet, legs, lips, the contrast of my chocolate against your fair and the way you fit around me and within me…the courage to change this doubt…because I can… 

I have the wisdom to know the difference between this and anything I ever felt before…I know My King…this is love…

I cannot find the words.  They use to rest in the hollow of my mouth, but today they have all been expunged by the passage of time.  I am missing you more than I could ever admit…even to myself.  I am fearful of the repercussions of my admission.  Will you run from me?  Will you feel safe in the love you built within me?  Now that I have known this love, I quiver at the thought of being without you.  We are the cliché that never happens.  I have spent the better part of my life denying myself you, or the possibility that I was worth the love you were sent to give. 

I open my window and water my new self-doubt plants; they are just beginning to bloom.  Someone told me that absence makes the heart grow fonder…I pray not forgetful.

 I am waiting for your return my love…

Come home.   

It could not wait.  I do not know when I will see you again.  I do not know when the brilliance of you will bless my bed again, when your spirit will enter and the veil that I wait under will be lifted. I see your name singing across the screen of my blackberry.  I release a breath of relief and connect the call.

“Hey babe,” you say in that way that you have.  I am attempting to get a hold of my emotions, be stronger in the face of what you MUST do (work), but how do you hold back love?  How do I love you less?  Tell me how and I will.   I will be the uncomplaining understanding woman you need.  Just teach me.

 I babble to keep you on the phone.  I have so much of nothing to say.  You are not a talker.  Most of your words come through your touch.  I still try to keep you on the line though, as I’d even settle for the sound of your breathing. 

“I’m sorry” I say.  “I know I am babbling just to keep you on the phone…I miss you.” 

“Its okay” you say to ease me, “I am here baby; I am listening to you.  I will let you know when I have to go.”  But inside it does not feel okay, You are not here and your absence transcends the joy, sneaking up on it and slitting its throat.

“Someone told me of your coming before you arrived.” I say spilling secrets I maybe should not tell.  “They said you’d come at the close of a retrograde.  She said you’d been here before, and you were my soul mate.  She told me you’d return once more in this existence and-”

 “- and?” you ask awaiting me to complete my story. 

“She said you’d be the love of my life…”

 “Interesting.” you respond.  “What do you think?” you ask.

I sigh with hesitation.  “I think she was right…” I don’t even hear your response or your reaction to my admission.  Deepak Chopra says the path to love is surrender.  We are in the killing fields.  Time to kill the pride.  Time to kill the hesitation. 

To quote an old church song, I surrender all.  There are some things I need to say to you.  I am not afraid anymore.  I don’t have it within me anymore to hold up the wall.  I can’t transcend the wall.  There is no love behind the wall, there is no you.

 Today I will revisit our first evening together.  I will revisit the silence of the apartment after slumber has taken my son toward his dreams.  I will revisit the tub, the shower, the olive oil and sea salt. 

I will hold my roundness, touch my belly and feel you in the deepest portion of my womb until such time you come for me.  I will prepare the place of incubation and keep myself well until such time where the “you and me” residing in my womb takes root and grows there.

 I will love you freely…

Boundlessly…

Effortlessly…

and truly…as though the sun may never shine again.

I have done many things to quiet the sound of this emotion wrapping on the door of my heart.  I wonder if you feel me thinking these thoughts.  Can you feel my longing?  I keep hoping that you will be next to me one of these nights when I stir from a exhaustion filled sleep.

I miss the smell of you on my sheets.  I was angered by people coming in and flopping on my bed.  It felt like they were stealing pieces of you from me, and I hated it.  Insecurity has filled the hollow of the bed I sleep in alone.  I guess he was patient enough to wait; he could smell the loneliness dotted behind my ears like perfume. 

There were other signs too.  The way that I brought the pillows out of retirement and tried to get them to mimic your shape.  It amazes me that I have memorized every crevice of your frame, but I couldn’t make the pillows warm enough, human enough…you enough.

I blink back tears.  I vow quietly to myself to tell you what you already know.  For the time and hours we are granted, I will open every darkened place in me and shed light on the love that has been seeping out of me.  The way your presence haunts me, long after you’ve gone.  

Your absence has become physically painful.  I am bleeding love in an ocean full of sharks, and they smell it.  They smell the blood; they have begun circling me.

Are you going to come?  Will you save me from the pain?  My temple has filled up with the smoke of loneliness. 

Things never seem to make sense.  I wasn’t seeking…why did you come for me?  What was the purpose of cracking through the pain only to leave me exposed and bleeding?

I haven’t been able to say it to you, how much I really love you.  Maybe instead of writing it it’s time to say it…in your presence…  

 Some have wondered about the hours I keep.  I go to sleep in the wee hours of every morning.  Oprah ushers me to bed around 2:05am.  Even with the television off Laurie Stokes, Bill Evans & Ken Rosato wake me up to face a pre-sun morning at 5:30am.  I wait until exhaustion diffuses my energy and I pass out, too exhausted to dream.  The choice to stay awake is because the last time I slept, your ancestors were waiting. 

They have loved you for some time now.  They came back, defied death to usher you through this existence.  I had no idea that you had asked them to guide you to me.  They are in every moment now, manifesting themselves on tongues of friends, in discreet places in photographs and of course in my sleep.  They have warned me this won’t be easy.  I am sure it will not be. 

A life time of ill-fated loves have left me with the bitter taste of insecurity in my mouth.  This is the longest I have dedicated myself to a love, the most I have ever believed. 

They love you, right down to the last freckle behind your left ear. 

Now that I am aware of their presence, I tremble in yours.  I can feel them around you, protecting you.  They know that the love you have, given to the right woman will transcend her.  She will greet your elders every day as easy as you greet your children.  Your family is not one to keep that allegiance quiet. 

Despite my spiritual background, I feel inadequate.  How can I measure up?  I do not want to disappoint them.  I do not know a lot, but I know I love you.  I do not have much, but I would readily release everything to awaken to you every morning.  My mind cannot fathom my life without you.  Up until this point, a life without you in it has never been considered.  I am writing my petition.  I will live in that love.  Greet your presence spiritually until I can physically.  I will honor you with my everything until I can on a daily basis.  Finally, I will allow you to do as a past love begged me to… 

Before our final good-byes he looked me square in the eyes.  He said “Renée, when the right man comes; please, let him love you.” Initially it was a bitter pill.  Now the same words are healing.  You are here, you are the right man…and I promise you, I will let you love me…

This is a delicate procedure.  You have made the marks where you will make the incisions.  I am afraid.  Whenever there are such procedures, there are always side effects.  “What will happen to me?  What will I lose?” I ask as you make the marks to indicate where you will cut.

“These growths are unhealthy,” you say matter-of-factly.  “You will lose the use of your insecurity.”  A shiver goes through me.  I know I don’t want it, but we’ve been together so long…I’m not sure how to say good-bye.  You being who you are reached for my trembling hand. 

“Let it go” you say.  My tears betray me.  I do not know how to be happy.  I am use to being hurt, down-trodden and cut down.  You stand from making the incision marks.  You circle my tears mid-stream.  “These,” you say “will be the first to go.”

You have me prepped for surgery shortly after this final consultation.  I can feel my heart raging against my chest cavity – she wants out.  We are in a room full of people, but you are the lone practitioner working on me.  “Is someone else gonna help you?” I ask looking around for other doctors.  You cup your hand on the side of my face.  You make eye contact.

“I got you.” You confirm. I drift under, your assurance acting as my anesthesia. 

When I awake, I can feel the difference in me.  I am sore.  I am sure it was no easy task pulling the things that hurt from me, but I know instantly the procedure was successful.

You pulled out of me the self-doubt and insecurity.  You reset my patience so that it moved in a timely manner.  You with your marvelous bed-side manner have reduced my independence

levels making room for love to come naturally.  You made me safe.  I can no longer see me failing.  There is a joy that awaits me once the bandages come off.   

It has been close to 2 weeks.  I am in recovery, adjusting to my new self.  I have found my voice again.  Happiness stops by frequently to visit.  She fills my room daily with calla lilies and sunflowers.  She is quite the florist; she places the flowers in clear vases with clear stones.  She places them in the water and they split the light.  She must have kissed the glass so that her children dance through all that glass.  I am glowing.  How did you install the glow? 

Doubt attempted to come.  He tried to pose as my spouse, but he was easily recognizable. Thank goodness you were there to help me end the gestation of self-doubt.  The only thing that could have occurred is that it would grow into self-hate.     

You come into my room carrying a bouquet of beautiful freckles all over you.  They smile when you smile, peeking out from behind your ears, under the interruption of your goatee. 

“How are you feeling today?” you ask, chart in hand.

I nod my head.  I cannot speak.  The false bravado that frequently sprawled from my throat had been silenced.  Suddenly the “me” that could say anything could say nothing. 

“What would you like me to do for you?” You ask in your smooth Trini accent. I open my mouth, part my lips, but no sound will emerge.  I reach for you, allow my hands to say what my mouth will not…

 I have fallen so in love with you…

  The first time she dried my tears I was 8 years old.  Colored girls like me saw things we should have never seen.  Mothers removed from home too early due to the necessity of working.  My mama was working at LaGuardia Community College at the time.  She came home and gifted me with three books.  Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The Negro Speaks of Rivers (A Harlem Renaissance Anthology) and For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf. 

In a world of fair-skinned woman, I saw myself sitting on the cover…a brown, black, Latina, African-American Woman.  She was everything I knew and nothing I knew.  She was me.  I sat in the back of the deep that the closet afforded to me in that apartment at 100 West 134^th Street.  There in the back of the closet, flashlight pen light at the ready she took my verbiage and threw it about my shoulders.  Weaved it into a strong pattern.  She reached from the pages (with her writing hand) and dried my tears.  By mid-poem…she cried with me…by the time Beau Willie Brown dropped his kids in the midst of his drunken-highness, my world was utterly and irrevocably changed.  It became my scripture…she my silent best friend along my journey. 

We never argued; she was easy and complex…she shouted from her pages when I told an ex-boyfriend, “My love is too delicate to have it thrown back on my face…” 

I clutched her writing hand to my chest amidst the two teenage abortions when the “metal horses gnawed at my womb…when dead mice fell from my mouth…”

When no one knew how lonely and pregnant I had been… 

I knew Willie Colon and Aresenio Rodriguez because she made the POEMS LOUD ENUF… 

I became the woman in orange, laid in the bottom of many shoes on the way back from the other lover’s house; giving a lot when he gave so little.  Stopped using the word sorry…because she told me she was tired of sorry, and I knew that if they truly wanted my forgiveness, folk was gon’ have to apologize…but she was right…it didn’t bring the sun back. 

We were separated when I went south and for two years…the rape monologue burned into my thoughts about the men that could and would do this…never imagined it could be my cousins…

She waited for me though; upon my return I found her there in Brooklyn…resting between Khalil Gibran’s Prophet, below Martin Luther’s Dream…To the left of where Alex Haley had grown Roots. 

She knew I’d been hurting.

“You still considering suicide?” she seemed to ask when I opened the cover.

“Yeah Ntozake, I’ve had enuf” I thought.  But it had just begun.  I was damn near spiritually dead.  Sensing my pain she cut herself…blood running ink on the page, a transfusion to save me from dying from my pain…Angry because I could remember when “I used to live in the world.”  I ran from being “redundant in the modern world.”

Soaked away glitter and men in the hollow of my tub, tightend skin and labia with rock salt & apple cider vinegar…

Everything I needed to be –  slid in the water, glitter and Palmolive…20 year old Jean Náte that grandmama left in her Housing Will (apartment).  I became everything they dreamed.  Became what I never considered… beautiful. This Choreopoem was the soundtrack of my life…and now I am moving to the edge of my own rainbow…

Whenever I considered suicide Ntozake was enuf…

Remember the first time?  The night sky was quiet.  Maybe I should have known, been more aware.  Maybe I am not as smart as I imagined.  I had reached a point I thought where I was untouchable.  Stupid me…I had no idea – I was walking across a mine field.

I believed the way to be clear.  I didn’t want the love war; in most instances I had been drafted.  Funny, Users discuss love…Romantics die from it.  I was that way for me.  I died within myself…nothing was left.  I’d seen many a heart blown into oblivion; I’d seen hand to heart combat.  Watched in horror as a fellow comrade lost their freedom to love, a prisoner of this stinking war that none could anticipate.  It is like that.

All Romantics darn the same uniform.  In this branch of military, we believe it to be some form of protection.  I laugh within myself from the idiosyncrasy of it all.  If one were to look, ever so gently under the blanket of history he’d see that no war was ever won where the soldiers were uniformed.  The fact that they were dressed as commoners…the average was their best camouflage.

Is that how you did it?  Wearing common clothes and shape shifting into a potential friend? I played the fool, did I not?  So naive was I to believe the field to be clear.  Mine fields couldn’t exist in Manhattan – no more than the bodies of long dead slaves…

My body was whole.  I knew I was suffering from PTLD (Post Traumatic Love Disorder), but physically I was whole.  You baited me.  Put yourself on the hook and waited for me to bite.  How could you have known?  You in your common clothes, requesting my number…I must of stood out like a sore thumb…a stranger in a foreign land.  You were so kind…almost like the Vietnamese children that reached out for the hands of American soldiers.  The soldiers never heard the ticking…

I followed you down the road with you leading me.  I was too weary to resist…too broken to mend alone; you appeared so learned – so confident.  When we first met, you reached for me as though you were drowning.  You reached for me…and my fucking compassion got the better of me.  We spent the better part of a month learning & loving through unfamiliar touches that seem native to the heart.  The lonely heart haunts you…poisoned me from the inside out.  In a state of euphoria I step too quickly…

And then…

I am numb.  I cannot feel the rest of me since you have inhabited my space…my air.  I can only feel one thing…my tears…

They burn on the way out; they are shrapnel tears…the remnants of my imploded heart.

It is true what they say.  Whenever you have a jolting life changing thing like this happen sometimes the soul is ejected.  I am standing outside of myself; love searching my remains for any sign of independence.  Powerless to stop it all from happening, I watch on the side lines as I am wrenched from the arms of independence.  Paralysis sets in.  Love has left me helpless and in it.  Soon it is clear to me the difference of just how smart I am, and just how smart I think I am.  The only thing love has proven, is that I am a wiz at being dumb…

I looked into his eyes and saw the future that I wanted.  He smiled  at me and I could swear, he knew that smile would divert my intentions…I wanted to know.  What was the possibility of being here in this moment for the rest of my life?

I know myself a little better every time I am in his presence.  I am comforted there, in the space and time of a visual embrace.  That’s right, he looks at me and with just a glance, he gives a peace that

runs over my soul…

I dream of him often, and I cannot remember relationships of the past ever being counted as painful.  Everything I have ever known before this moment has been par for the cause.  A course in the reality of him.  There is a nervous energy when we are together.  It is scary and exciting all at the same time, and highly addictive.  I want to know this energy at all times that keeps me on my toes.   Being in this situation reminds me of the acronym about F.E.A.R.

I can feel an energy from him.  Could he possibly want me too?  How has he been able to contain it?  It burst from me in a million eruptions, and emits from me like trapped light.  I scare him.  I know that I do.  I represent all of the things he may not be prepared to face.  What should he do?

F*CK EVERYTHING AND RUN:How often has he chosen this?  How many times had he saved his neck from what he perceived to be the guillotine of love?  So this is where he is…

I keep hoping that he will:

FACE EVERYTHING AND RE-LOVE: I want to hold him in my arms when I see him.  Comfort him from the bruises he has obtained from the storms that come with love.  He doesn’t trust it, the feeling that comes with it, therefore he doesn’t trust me.  I want him to face everything that prepared him for this moment.  The heart ache.  The broken promises…the broken misses…

I wish I could curl into the bend of him…know the joy of him between these arms, and rest in the pleasure of this love…

Now I wish I could remember how it felt BEFORE I loved him…

“I finally know what it’s like to have a man open up your spirit and passionately kiss your soul…” – Renee Michele Breeden

Love shows up in the craziest of places…in the sun of your dreams, bursting your heart open.  I don’t wanna be here…but I do…  I am afraid of my feelings.  Emotions have a way of splitting you open, an unnatural way of dividing the soul.  I don’t know if I want to do this…the last person known to have split his soul was Lord Voldemort…I am not magical.  I have no horacruxes in which to store the divided parts of my soul.  Love splits you, just the same.  What am I gonna do?  I’m just a muggle…

Love is the ultimate surrender.  It means being disposessed from your hiding place.  Funny thing about love is it even operates in stealth mode, so that going under the radar is a crock…there is no place that you can hide – love has night vision too.  So what happens when you’re so exposed?  What do you do?  It IS an emotional rollercoaster…the highs rivaling the heights of anything Six Flags may have…  Here we go again.  I can’t seem to strap myself in tight enough.  There is no bracing yourself , how do you prepare yourself for this?  For this merciless emotion that marinates you, butters you up and then grills your heart alive?  It seems as though my heart has ADHD…it won’t sit still!  It can’t seem to focus on me and my own life!  Oh boy…here we go again…I hope this damn ride don’t make me sick!

 You have gone back to your wife.  I am back in bed, laying in the sheets love left behind by our merging.  I know this could not be more right.  I think you married your job when all the world was quiet, when we were worlds apart.  A portion of me is sorry that we happened so late, but in my heart I know we are right on time.  Your job is your wife.  Securing her place, she was committed to you, and she had absoluteness, a dedication that most women were devoid of.  Her presence allowed for your hiding place.  At the end of the work week, she’d stand before you, offering this dowry for your commitment to her.  It is within that job that you came to a realization.  Your wife left no room for love or the hurt that appeared to shadow it, believe me, I do understand. 

Love is strange though.  It arrives when we are through with seeking it; begins within us once we are done with it.  Surrender, possesses a strength we never fathomed, and to the untrained heart appears weak.  I now know…it is not.  We were weary of empty relationships, masking them under the guise of adoration.  We decided to control what we had control over – you decided on your job, I chose to mother my son.  We never anticipated each other.  How could we?  Fate fooled us.  Blinded we were placed in New York, on those post office steps, under the twelfth night sky in June.  You looked right through me.  Your penetrating stare the one I couldn’t get away from.  I saw you and every resolution I made to be done with love was forgotten.  Where did you come from?  So splendid and beautiful and holding my attention from the corners of my eyes.  I thought you could not see hoped you could not.  Did you know that I was staring?  Unable to move my glance from your face or your spirit – I stole glances…and you let me.  My soul held fast to you and I was afraid.  My soul walked into your open arms, leaving me to fend for myself.  You and my soul are familiar.  The “me” that lay dormant for years danced around at the sight of you.  I looked around for the one you’d chosen…God help me…you chose me.  I waited for the ball to drop, the change to come, for your imperfection to surface…it has shown no signs of appearing. Love goes by a different name.  Imperfection doesn’t exist between us my love, because as it presently stands, we were perfected for one another. 

The day is drunk off its own sun light, unaware that the love we have made is intoxicating to her as she melts into the horizon.  I am back in the bed; amongst pillows that are also taken with you, so enamored are they by your physique and beauty, they have immortalized your form within their softness.  You have brought tears to my eyes. Prayer and tears were offered while you were making love to me.  This had to come from someplace celestial.  My goodness, the lovemaking was that good…  In all my years of spirituality, I have never been closer to God as the well placed orgasm has brought me.  Making love with you makes the things that made no sense now make sense.  Everything before come together now.  You have brought me in His presence within the vehicle of my own pleasure…I am already following you as you follow God.  The tears are falling again.  They are brimming at the edge of my lids, overflowing my lashes, splashing down my face.  I can still smell you on the sheets…this and we are real. 

It doesn’t make sense. How quickly we’ve known one another; we surrendered to love making, anxious and discarding our clothes once the apartment door closes…What are the rules?  Society says this between us is too soon.  We haven’t “known” one another long enough to say what our hearts, what our feelings have been professing.  How long before I can love you freely, openly and without judgment? 

I say now…

Your touch haunts me…

I am almost certain that under black light, your fingerprints would be revealed, forever imprinted on my soul; on me.  What have you done?  You came from out of the ionosphere, landing amidst my issues.  In the mirror of your eyes I saw them, realized I’d read them all, and promptly cancelled my subscription.  I am disoriented around you.  I am breathless, enamored…floored.  Some are mistaken.  They have chalked up my emotions based on the intensity, the swiftness.  For the first time ever, I know I don’t care.  What do they know?  Everything in me speaks to the magik of you.  Did you hear me?  I said the MAGIK.  There are no illusions.  In you I found the words I lost.  The magik I invested in desolate places.  The wind dances through my hair and suddenly I know your fingers in it.  Your thighs inter-mingled with mine.  Your locs rest beautifully over my pillows and I KNOW…

So this is what I have sought after my entire life.  You change the very inner workings of my nature.  So ravenous I am for the taste of you, I care less about where and more so about when…or how frequently. 

My dreams of you are massive.  Soiling the sheets, I have learned to play what has now become your instrument of choice.  Though successful in playing the most basic of your sensual tunes, there is nothing like your expert hands, gripping my hips like the ends of the harmonica, blowing and pulling deeply on my center.  Only you can make it sing my love.  Who knew we could play a perfect symphony upon one another? Who knew that we’d explore orifices’ that others may have attempted to…and failed?  The sound I emit as a result of this climax is traveling at the speed of light and transcending sound barriers.  I want to make love with you slowly.  Know all of my five senses in your arms.  This is your charge.  You are giving me back myself.  Your arm circles my waist; the other hand grazes my breast on its way to my chin.  You lovingly guide my face to your mouth…my heart races and I draw deeply as I feel you make your entrance.  Never in my life have I wanted what I’m about to ask…

Stay…

Stay in the position we are in.  I want to know this, know you.  Don’t move.  I know outside the world is spinning on its axis.  I know there are jobs to be worked, bills to be paid, ambitions to reach for…but just for tonight, like never before…love me into the wee hours of joy…into the brink of oblivion, where thinking of you as I have been becomes okay. 

I can’t continue playing an instrument I was never mean to play.  Only you can read the sheet music…then again, you’ve been playing this clitoris by ear since I met you.  I want feel you inside of me.  It’s okay – stay as long as you’d like. You are the “artist-in-residence”.  Feel free to retreat to the warm wetness you induce and make love to me over and again…and again…  

Tonight, I dream.  When I can advance no further in the present due to our long divides, the Creator induces sleep.  I fall past cognizant memory and we are in another place; romance pulling back the years until this life is in the womb of a yet to come century.  We look different, you and I, but the life blood of emotion runs the same.  I KNOW you…

We are in the Serengeti; the sun is bedding the horizon.  It is a newborn 20^th century; it is young at best skipping around in the 11^th year.  We are Maasai.  You are changed; beautiful sun-kissed in all of your glory.  The British have come and relentlessly reduced our lands.  The majesty in your gait has waned; you had plans for us, a life of provision, love and family. 

How do we reclaim all we’ve lost?

We’ve taken to each other’s arms wherever and whenever we can.  You are 19, your father’s youngest; the child with the biggest heart.  Your father has instructed your brothers in the way of restriction.  They have been taught restraint in matters of the heart…I thank the ancestors silently everyday that your father was too old to coach you, too old to clog your emotional drain.  Dementia has replaced your many mothers in your father’s bed.  He is a shell of his former self.

We have not done the marital dance.  We make love in the ways that bring no babies.  I have sought Engai’s favor in the face of this love.  I am sure she hears me, as she brought you to me in the 1^st place.  Your brothers are gone.  The warriors your father made them into sealed their early fates.  The majestic Maasai of this family is reduced – 15 children now reduced to 4.  All that is left are your 3 sisters and you.  You are angry, afraid, reckless.  I cannot find my family.  I cleave to you.  Today, each is in need of the other.  In the cool of the newly birthed evening we kiss.  It is as full as it has been in lifetimes past, a mix of tears, teeth and sand.  We do not care.  Both of us are happy to have the other.  There, we lay claim to the only thing we have left…each other.  We fumble like the amateurs we are, but love, our love calls from the inside of us, instructing the way.  You part my thighs as you have many times before and push past the barrier never made for your mouth.  I grip your strong shoulders, and for the first time in weeks, I feel safe…

The entrance is difficult.  I become fearful.  In line with my spirit you slow your pace and place your kisses all over my face.  I know these lips, even before you kissed me for the first time in this existence.  After you have rubbed my joy and my womanhood responds with its own oceans you ease in.  We are moving to a rhythm, a beat the lulls us in this moment; rolling into the folds of passion.  My head falls back in ecstasy…our spirits merging in a one glorious song…you, me and all the game of the Serengeti…

This weekend the heavens wept.  The sun, hiding in obscurity – took away her shine.  Their argument was soft, but an argument none the less.  I stood behind glass and pane my heart filing with tears…

How did I get to missing you so much?

I have thought about us, loved the way our moments hold me when you cannot.  I love your honest fingers.  They reach out for me and love me in the simplicity of their touch.  Don’t you ever stop touching me…  You walked into me, like wind through tree and I have been smart enough to bend, to not resist what I cannot understand.  The rigidness that is born from an inability to compromise would break us.  I have turned my back on the familiar to know you.  The feel of your strong hands behind my knees…with everything masculine you pull me to you and kiss my womb.  She opens to receive you; allowing her love to flow, she spills her secrets into your oral cavity.  My body responds…inhabited by this mysticism called ‘you’.  I bend in contortions normally impossible.  I know it…more than I ever have – this is love and loving…

Yea though I walk through the shadow of the valley of you, I won’t fear this feeling, because your kiss, your fingers they comfort me.  I can feel your thoughts on me; almost see you touching your lips.  I am smelling the sheets in anticipation of the re-creation of this memory…

You feel familiar.  There is nothing new about us.  We have not forgotten the old ways of love and loving.  The way we have loved each other in lives past…the Serengeti, Shanghai, Cuba, and Venezuela…

Some life time meetings were minute, we’d fall in love; pulled by that amazing energy.  I wonder if we knew then, recognized as we do now.  There was always something pulling us toward the other, this unconditional love.  Throughout our joint incarnations, we are always lovers…not knowing and discovering, literal and metaphoric.  We merged in the most breath taking places, the pull stronger than our ability to withstand the energy we produce when together.

Our first time is always more than we can understand, more than has ever been explained.  No one ever said this is what it would feel like.  We have gifted other things with a title they never deserved.  You are love…brave, brilliant, celestial and hells fire, temptation and torment, both life and soul.  I have followed you, from existence to existence; excited and afraid to know you and not, to love you and not.  I lost you in one existence and cried from the loss, the crater it left inside of me.  I spent the rest of those days in a small room, reaching out to your memory, past lives zipping in and out of me, content in my memory, guarding it, this love fiercely.   Nothing else feels right save for you.  I pull back in fear, advance in the same.  I awake…

You are wrapped about me. Legs, arms, breast, chest wrapped in sheets.  Sleep has found you and you snore softly, lulling me.  This is my favorite time with you.  At rest, you’re still wrapped in the sap of love, wrapping yourself into me.  This feels so good.  I examine my hands and how they are now shaking.  The energy we create together cannot be contained.  It is emitted through my fingers, my lips, my heart…

I know envy.  I have had the distinct displeasure that comes with it.  There is this thing between us…this lover’s envy…

There is this wonderfulness about you.  I cannot quite put my finger on.  I could watch you walk through a door a million and one times, and I swear, every time is like the first. Damn…I just love the way you wear your skin…

Your name for me is synonymous with passion.  Your very presence wraps me up.  I love the way you stare past my eyes.  Your touch is as little torches, Lighting the way to my soul.  You journey through the halls in which my soul is kept.  You walk within me as though you KNOW me; there you are opening door, tearing back drapes allowing the sun to pour in.  In case my actions do not show it, look at the sign posted within the halls of my emotions, right beside my heart is a sign…in bold letters, a big red dot and the words

“YOU ARE HERE.”

How the hell did this occur?  Why now?  The way we look at one another I can literally feel the energy between us.  You always come with this air of confidence…you strong arm my love without making contact.  By the time our hands have reached forward, grazed the other, I am nothing of my former self.  The broken people pleaser now gone, I see my joy reflected.  You come to the door, with love in hand like an aged wine…

I unlike the door and you take over locking it behind you and holding my concentration with your eyes.  I have changed three times before your arrival.  My hair, make-up and clothes finally flawless, we walk down the hall in my apartment to my bedroom.  Spinning me gently, you ask “What’s this?”  I smile like a child in kindergarten; maybe I shouldn’t, but I wait for your approval.

“You like?” I ask.  You respond sensually, “you’re beautiful, but I’d have much preferred you come to the door naked.  We could’ve started from there…”

We disrobe.  Already making love with our minds, it seems that you are undressed before me.  You pull around my waist and kiss my “other” lips.  There is no waiting, you want me now; clothes off, jewelry on.  You spin me until am beneath you.  I am a mess – hair dripping wet, breathing rapid and deep your look says that the only thing I need to be wearing right now is our perspiration…and you.

You are playing your harmonica again.  I grab for the throw pillow on my bed in an attempt to muffle my screams of passion.  You reach for and seductively snatch it from my face.  You don’t want to miss this, as I almost seem to hyperventilate in the “throws” of your musical talent. 

The exchange goes on for longer than we anticipate.  I almost say it…I stop, fall short of the admission.  Sometime the words “I love you” can change the course and dynamic of a beautiful developing relationship.  I do not perceive you to be so shallow; but I know at the end of all things I want to close my eyes FEELING as I do right now.  I wrap my fingers into a handful of your locs. My other hands is exploring your face, amazed at the way God could so artful place each freckle where your beauty could still shine through.  I love everything about you, from the red of your hair on your head, to the reddish brown of your goatee.  I run my fingers across your lips and you kiss them and gently put them between your teeth.  All this in the middle of a merge.  We never drop eye contact.  I close my eyes and turn my head to the side as though the mere act will hide the love raining from my tear ducts.  You take me by my chin and turn my head back to you.  You want to see me, you want to see this.

I drink you in.  The time between our visits vary, I know, so I ingest you totally.  Amazed am I by the fact that we are both tattooed in the same spot across our backs.  You walk with an assurance that many wait various lifetimes to possess.  Kokopelli majestically playing his flute on your ankle; you may as well be the piped piper, because I will follow your music where ever it leads me.  I love the feel of your heart beating in your chest.  It is sheer magic. I love the way you come for lunch and will only have me.  You are joy, one of the reasons I returned in this life.  I realize now, in every incarnation I’ve been seeking you and not knowing until the moment arrives when you have kindled the light in my heart. 

The hour has elapsed and we are once more wrapped in one another.  I swear I do not want to leave, an hour isn’t enough.  I realize though, I must wake you to return to work.  We don’t know about the next time, the future is unclear.  Whatever it is, I am cognizant that future involves us and the spirits that animate us to return to this love again.  I know joy here.  Protection here, peace here.  You come to love me and I accept the gift from a man who’s outer beauty is only surpassed by his inner beauty.  If I never tell you my love,

I love the way you wear your skin…

I find solace here; in this field of dreams. This dream lead me here; I am at the edge of the world, watching the ocean dance as it stirs up the gift.  The sun is setting, but the beach is desolate, save for us.  It is the Fall Equinox, and the weather unusually cool.  I am not cold though; there is warmth under the flannel blanket, beneath you on the sanded steps…your chin resting softly on my cradle’s cap.  In my youth, I foolishly sat by the water almost daring it to snatch me from the sand; I am older now, wiser.  I am a daughter of Neptune; it wasn’t time to take my leave.  I have told you sometime ago of my journeys to the Oceanside, how I had listened to the waves for the answers to the things that were beyond my understanding.  Love had evaded me for so long, I didn’t have an idea of how it would feel until you arrived.

Your arms are wrapped around me, holding me as though the wind now blowing forcefully will carry me away.  You reach for my belly, five months full of our love.  It’s magnetic.  This little one responds to your touch as I have.  Flutters at first, and then strong impatient bumps against the walls of my abdomen.  I imagine that in her last incarnation she was a Black Panther.  So dedicated was she that in my womb, she still raises her fist in solidarity…POWER TO THE PEOPLE…

…and we have it…power.  We love, we journey to the center of each other’s soul, and we know that we are one-winged angels.  In the heavens love makes the provision, and we fly…

“I love you…” I say in a barely audible whisper, praying that the wind will carry that love to acceptance or muffle it against rejection.  You wrap your arms around me, hold me closer.  “I love you too,” you respond back against the backdrop of my heart beating wildly in my throat.  “What do you suppose we should do about that?”  I laugh a hardy laugh that rocks our bundle within its natural crib.  I am at a loss for words.  So many of the things we’ve done, the way we’ve loved make no sense.  We are uncommon, open, crazy, in love, in joy but more importantly, we’re in bliss.  My mind is racing.  There is nothing I want more than to wake up next to you every morning…breathe in the breath you exhale.  I stay quiet though.  I have spent my life “handling” everything.  I do not want to take this from you, this decision, this male role…this role of leadership.  We lock fingers.

You have moved from your original position.  We still speak without words, you and I, and you want to look into my eyes.  You rest yourself on the sand and face me, looking directly in my eyes.  “I don’t know how we gonna do this, but I wanna wake up next to you everyday” you say, pilfering the words from my thoughts.  Your eyes shift over my shoulder for a moment.  You are trying to construct an answer, a solution.  Love connects us, reality pulls from us.  We are still two single parents; my son, your daughters.  Moving in either direction would uproot them.  You remove the ring from your right hand.  It is a simple, masculine and yet handsome band.  You take my left hand and slip it delicately on my ring finger.  Tears spill from the overflowing wells of my eyes.  I close my eyes delicately, keeping them shut for a few moments.  This is my attempt to hold on to this moment, my attempt to hold on to the “right now” of this elation.

“Look at me babe.” you say, coaxing me to open my eyes. I trust you, so I do.

“I promise I want you.  I want what we have all the time.”  My insides are churning; our offspring is going to be a cheerleader…or a football player.

“Let me figure this out.  We gonna find a way.”  I nod my head, sniffling back tears as though they will recede back into my eyes.  You wrap your arms around my protruding belly and rest your head there.  I feel like a powerful vessel.  I’ve been chosen for you…it is an amazing feeling.  You give me kisses, beautiful kisses all the way up my belly, between my breast, up my neck, to my chin and finally my lips.  We are playing the biting game again.  I open my eyes to see you; I love to see you kiss me.  Your eyes are closed, and ever so beautiful I see the immergence of your tears.  I have never seen them before in our entire time being together.  They are christening our love.

I silently thank God for making me a womb-man…I go even further; more than any other time, I thank God for being your womb-man…

It is a Sunday.  The streets of Harlem are dancing with African American pride.  So expressive are the people with joy the walls of my apartment vibrate with the sounds of their celebration.  I am inside, on the second to last day of Summer.  I am obsessing over making you soup, as you have been ill.  Your work schedule compromises your immune system and you were out of work for two days.  You are better now, but I must do this.  I want you to know that you have my support.  We spoke last evening at least three times, and I have told you (while slightly inebriated) that I miss you.  

In your attempt to divert the fact that the times we see one another is few, you chuckle softly and say, “you miss what I do to you…”

“That’s not the only thing I miss,” I respond. “I miss when you fall asleep in my bed and I’ve got my head on your chest and I fall asleep to your heart beating; gosh, I really, really, really (hiccup!) miss you.”

“I know baby,” you say, “I miss you too.” you admit.

“Oh no!” I say suddenly.  “I’m not supposed to be telling you all this stuff.  You’re not supposed to know this yet!”  You smile again at my profession. 

It is the next day and I have made three trips to the market.  Flour, thyme, okra, corn, celery, scallions, extra virgin olive oil, chicken breast, cayenne pepper, red onion and bell pepper – check.  The phone rings on my side.  My ring tone being the sound I want to hear for real…a laughing baby.  You are on the other line.  You are coming to me.  I worry about how you’ll get here, since the parade has blocked off many streets, but before I know it you are down stairs calling me to buzz you in.  I finish tidying my room in just enough time and you are at the door.

“I’m dusty.” you say trying to explain your appearance.

“So?” I say not quite caring.  We are all over each other.  I kiss you from your head to your toes, drink in the magic of you.  From your ankles, up your legs and thighs, your center (and linger) to your chest, your neck and your lips – MY GOD – THOSE LIPS…

Every time you come, you stay longer.  The love today is so intense, so passionate.  After the climatic finish, I am stretched out on the bed, drenched in our sweat and love.  You have retreated to the head of the bed, resting on the pillows.

“Come here.” you ask softly.  I pull up my body and crawl over to you.  You take me in your arms and put my head on your chest.  Together, we fall into the arms of sleep, turning in the same direction.

We wake an hour later and you must return to work.  Premature of your birthday and not knowing when I will see you again, I give you your gift.  You open the box and are pleasantly surprised by the polished gun metal key chain baring your name inside.

“Baby, this is nice.” you say. 

“You like it?” I ask.  You nod your head in assurance.  I take the key chain off the board holding it.  You notice the gift isn’t complete.  Turning the small box on its side, a set of keys falls out onto your lap.

“What’s this?” you ask.

“It’s your birthday gift.  They are the keys.  Now you don’t have to wait to get in downstairs.”  You keep staring at them.  Keys are an important thing to a woman.  It is a subtle way she has of letting the man she is with know that he has been chosen.

I hope you know it baby, I chose you…my heart, my Adonis, my Eros…

 It has been 34 hours since I last fell asleep on your chest, listening to your heart beating against its cage.  So taken am I with you, my heart now does the same in your absence, raging against the machine.  Who ever knew?  That love could slow the busy streets of New York City?  Who could have predicted that love has the ability to cause more street closures than the President? 

Every time you leave, the energy which you’ve left in me races.  I am always left shaking afterward, beyond our love making and the orgasm.  The nervous energy-filled shake.

“I can’t stop shaking.” I say while lying on your chest.  I swear your love injections race through me like some sort of truth serum.  ‘I love you’ sits on the edge of my lips.  In a moment of insecurity, I bite my bottom lip to incarcerate the nearly paroled truth.  Removing wind from my voice box, I lip synch my confession. 

I love you…

In that instant you pull me closer.  Could you have known?  Felt me say it?  I try to push back the possibility.  I lift my head to see your resting face.  Your eyes are closed, but your hands are awake.  You are touching me, arm around my shoulder, our fingers locked in their own embrace.

I fell asleep there, shifted once while you shifted with me and I am elated in the feel of us spooning.

∞Ω∞ 

It is 3:41 am and the “energy” you’ve left within me has me awake, scribing this love once again.  I know this to be happy.  I am so happy; I wish I could give every woman in the world one of you.  If I could I’d clone you and give copies to all the woman that were broken by men too distorted to see their own worth.  You are magic…

I am afraid though.  When you are a woman like I; a woman who has had independence weaved into her tapestry, sometimes you get in your own way. 

So I will need you to teach me.  Teach me to allow you this; you being the man you are and to do things for me, in the way that makes men proud.  I am now 35, and I am learning the importance of stepping back and giving you the room to make decisions. I want to allow your support.

I know you are sleeping.  You do so much, in so little time.  If I never told you, I am extremely proud to be your woman.  There is no joy like the joy you give. 

We are still learning one another.  While there are things that my independence blocks from you, the same is your independence from me.  I have cooked for you, but you haven’t gotten to eat.  I long (more than anything) to awaken next to you…meet the morning together, but our lives at their present station won’t allow for it.  It is coming, this I am sure of.  We left one another, a work in progress.  The edges are still rough.  I think this will be the puzzle we love solving.

At Last…my love has come along… 

The cuffs are the first things to come off when I make it through the door.  It is a religious practice I make before exiting; they are the last things to go on.  I deflect hate with them, negative energy, pain.  On a daily basis, because of the spirit that animates me, I carry the world in my womb, the universe in my palm; the stars in my eyes.  My shoulders are broad from bench pressing the strain of a smile when all I wanna do is cry.  My battle scars are from being someone’s strength when all I feel is broken.  Even in the midst of a break, there are people on the outside asking “can you carry these bags for me?”  And I do.  Then you come along…and you notice.

I watch you, as I stand under the shower of heartbreak.  Hungry for you, I press my face against the glass.  Suddenly, you turn to me.  We make eye contact, and you rush to help the distressed damsel.  Umbrella in hand, you rush through the glass door with your umbrella built for one…and I refuse; telling you, “that’s okay, I got my jacket.”  Silly independent me. 

You walked in and the cuffs came off…there was nothing to defend.  My King, there is nothing I desire more than hang up my lead and follow you; to leave the choice to you and allow you to guide.  I feel safer with you than I’ve EVER felt in the past.  You hold my heart in the palm of your hand.  How gentle you are with it, keeping it out of the mud, off the ground, secure. 

Some women crave it, some women struggle to get it, others struggle to keep it.  I do not.  The independent woman role was born from survival – necessity is the mother of invention.  I had a choice…take care of myself or die.  Others never saw that.  To them, my strength was a beacon light upon their weakness, their short comings.  I was constantly left for underachievers; background women.   Then you came.  Symbolically wiping away tears you couldn’t physically see.  Every day, you save me from myself, and I love you for it.

We are seeing one another for the first time in three weeks.  The countdown begins as my son unexpectedly returns home.  Anxious about a weekend he deems “boring” I search for my wallet to give him money to enjoy the parade.  Absentmindedly, I have put my wallet where I cannot  remember.

“How much are you giving him?” you ask while I am still retracing my steps.

“Twenty.” I respond pacing the floor. “He may want to go to the movies.”  You lift yourself from your position and search your wallet.  You extract a few dollars and hand them to me.

“This is all I can spare.” you say and put them in my hand.  Independent that I am, I continue my search and find my wallet in a backpack in the kitchen.  I put the money in my son’s hands and he heads toward the parade.

“I found my wallet.”I say.  I don’t want to take from you if I have it. I return your money to you. It isn’t until much later that I understand my mistake.  You are a man.  It is your innate nature as a man to feel needed.  Like you can take care of yours.  That includes me.  I must say it, I do need you. 

My body has gotten tired leaping tall buildings in a single bound.  My mind is weary from being the counselor, from the upliftment and my sinking as a consequence.

With my everything I lay down the cuffs, take your hand and step into the future; your woman, your rib, your promise. 

The cuffs – they are the first things I take off, and the last I put on…

I am placing the lasso of truth about myself and admitting that I long for you to lead and love me.  No one else could have done this better… 

It finally has a name…

What was done to me finally has a name.  I wrap myself in the pillows on my bed; bathe the pillow cases in my tears.  Closing my eyes brought it all back.  Memories funneled through the labyrinth of my brain.  Today it came back for me; it caught up to me and sucker punched me in my chest.  It has been 21 years since I walked into the ranch style, three-bedroom hell; 21 years since I passed the washer and dryer that muffled my tears and I can still SEE it.

A child of the joke was I…broken in spirit…how do you reset those bones?  It was my fault I’d say; drilling the untruth into my own head.  I returned every night to the chill of the bathroom floor, to the pipes under the bathroom sink were they’d stick my head.  It was all because of me.  I was nine…trading everything I never knew.  Depression surged forth; convinced me of my consent to them sweating on top of me.  

Strange fruit was I…hanging from their libido tree, the nine year old me…eyes bulging

tongue protruding from me.  A dead me.  The only signs of physical mortality glistening from my eye ducts and the pain in my abdomen from grown up games behind a hollow wood door and 2 humming machines…ironically washing away the evidence seeping out nightly in my urine…

Someone named it.  It was as the child I never wanted.  Growing in me like tumors can in women mimicking babies…with hair, teeth and no heart beat.  Memories & pain hiding beneath the guilt.  The guilt of giving away what wasn’t ready to be given.  It now had a name…consensual incest…

With my consent I learned at nine to place my knees just below my blossoming behind sans the stir-ups.  With my consent I learned how to eject my own soul and watch outside of myself a battle-less rape.  With my consent I got high on words, rolled up depression and took long drags – by 10 years old I was shooting depression straight into my veins.  Splitting personalities, not remembering the little girl my mama sent for safe keeping.  I’d sometimes wonder if she was still there.  I was 11 when I left.  I just ran and never came back.  It was by my consent…and I’m sorry…

Coming back for me was hard, I spent the next 21 years trying to stop the crying, those tears don’t ever run dry.

It took 19 years to see…we (she & me) weren’t at fault.  It’s taken 19 years to get all the different parts of me together in one temple to face this truth.  To understand the scalding showers I’d take, the sensation of never being clean; scrubbing myself incessantly until I’d burn away skin…

Years passed this way…a receptacle for unwanted sperm; a high stakes game of poker.  Throwing my chips on the table…walking away empty-handed. 

I learned to draw on a smile.  Paint on my pretty.  Walk on the outskirts of the city and pimp my own perfection.  I’d become a mother, stored sperm in the quiet of my womb…a pauper gave birth to a prince, to my best friend.  By the time he was in training for manhood, I no longer cared about having arms to protect me.  I was no longer signing permission slips.  The trips to the wonderland of my honey pot museum were done.  I’d found all the parts of me, in the faces of other women who never had the words I’d been free basin’ on…I was now a full- fledged writing junkie.  I LOVED the smell of ink, hung out at libraries for the “peep shows” and all I had to do was slide in my card to “see the show.”

It was all with my consent.    

And then…

One night in June, at the close of a retrograde…you came.  You man, with your smooth Trini swagger… your ridiculous good looks…your infectious stare.  Looking directly in my eyes was REAL love…

Without a word we communicate.  You kiss me deeply and resuscitate the little girl; stroke one of the few places in me that is still soft.  You have effectively convinced her she’s still precious…by loving me…

Without my consent…

and for that – I am ever so grateful…

Sometimes it seems as though there is a reservoir of tears.  Just when I believe that I am now devoid of them, they return, falling from the bottom of my emotions.  I miss you.  A year has passed since your demise, and still the pain of it is as yesterday.  I was alone then, the sole mourner at your funeral, probably the only person who could truly feel your loss.  You were breath and fear, bone and borrowed, wisdom and worry.  Would you make it?  Could you survive in a womb such as mine? Your heart beat beneath mine in a wonderful staccato.  Sonogram concertos were frequent during your stay; I always brought a ticket to hear the music of your heart beating.  I wish there were something.  Something I could say that would remove the damage I had done.  What kept me from holding you beyond the womb?   

I felt your genius within me, your gift searing through your incubation period.  Your spirit strong and resolute.  You were a writer, I know; as you have been animating me to tell this story.  This voice is not my own, but we are connected.  I wonder if you’ll ever return to me.  I have thought that I wanted you that much where my insides fell around you; you were smothered there…I’m sorry.

These, my unborn, are my tears.  I am still by the gravesite in my mind…commissioned to mourn you.  I will remember you when all else is forgotten my prodigal child.

I was so afraid before.  I was afraid to close my eyes, as I knew the feeling was waiting for me just beyond sleep.  For a few fast yet perfect hours, I knew the joy of rocking you in these barren arms, and I knew what it felt like for those arms to no longer be empty.  For a few perfect hours I knew the feeling of giving life to you, curled in my arms…your lips to my breast as you ingest this life giving elixir made in my bosom just for you.  The nights have been countless where the dream is just us, sitting in the quiet of my room; you are tucked in the bend of my arm, gurgles of joy as you drink yourself full and happy.  I keep praying that you will choose me…again.

The margin of time you are allowed by people is minimal.  I should have covered the memory of you in dirt some time ago, as others have and move on with my life.  I called you “Blessing” when I knew, but maybe I wasn’t deserving of one…

368 days have eclipsed since your expulsion from my womb.  I found out a week before they removed your remains.  You lay in state in the quiet of my womb for the better part of a week.  You were a part of me.  How could I remove you?  Look myself in the face?

The day of the procedure advanced quickly.  No one came for me, for us.  We were alone, you and I.  There were a team of female doctors there.  Politics were discussed, various other topics of the day. 

“This will hurt just a little.” the anesthesiologist says as she places the needle into my IV line.

It was as though fire shot through my veins.  It burned through my fingers and up my hands and went racing up my arm.  Was this my punishment?  We were alone.

I woke up and you had gone; my womb empty and crying.  The nurse gave me pads to catch the tears.  Shame…my womb was crying a lot faster than the pads could catch them.  I passed out from a massive loss of tears.

You visit from time to time.  A flutter in the spot where you should have grown.  A dream of you.  A memory of a yet to come future.  I miss you child, and mourn you.  One day I pray for a reason to stop crying.  Maybe it will come on the cusp of your return, with the first feel of you moving inside of me once again.

 It was the first time we were together.  I am timid, afraid of your touch; I am afraid of your beauty.  You are exquisite.  You walk through the door, your beautiful locs expertly placed in a bun at the nape of your neck.  We have chatted over the phone and arrived at this point via our conversation.

“What are you doing?” you ask.  I am stretched out across my bed as girl women do, elated by the fact that I have you on the phone.

“I am lying across my bed.  I am about to get into the shower.” I admit matter-of-factly. I can hear your smile over the line.

“Mmmmm” you say, as I imagine that your eyes are closed.  Wish I was there with you.  Are you dressed?” I smile full and wide at your inquiry.

“No” I respond, “I’m getting ready to get in the shower.”  I was elated by this conversation, your voice sending ripples through me. 

“What’s stopping you?” you questioned. 

“I am mixing virgin olive oil with sea salt.  It softens the skin.”  I hear your smile across the line. 

“I can’t wait to take that shower with you.” you say.  My body stiffens at your admission.  I am apprehensive.  There is forbearance in my tone, and you hear it. 

“I think it’s a little early for that.  Don’t you think?” I ask.  I want to be good; I want this to be different.  I need for you to really SEE me. 

“Why do you think it’ll lead to?  You got a dirty mind!  Maybe I just wanna hold you.  It doesn’t have to be anything that you don’t want it to be.”  My heart warms all over.  I know the truth.  I want you here as much as I want you to be here.

“You can come baby.” I say before I could stop myself.   Again, you are smiling.

“I’m already on my way.”  I am racing around the room; tying up loose ends.  You are in Harlem in a matter of minutes, at the door.  I am nervous.  My hands are shaking as I unlock the door.  You are luminous.  You walk through my door in all of your Trinidadian splendor.  Dark blue jeans, black t-shirt, and your masculine flip-flops.  There is a masculinity about you that is massive.  I have never smelt the scent of this, tasted what it feels like to have a man in my life.  I close the door behind you and lock it.  You reach for me.  Enclosing your arms about me, I feel your kiss for the very first time.  It is deep, soft and intoxicating.  I almost lost my footing as you disengage.  We walk nervously to my bedroom.  The television is the only sound between us, Jimmy Kemel provides the back ground “music” for our first night together.

I am feeling inadequate.  I am very different from the way you see me outside.  I have no make-up on; there is no extra hair…just me.  I steal a look over at you.  Your eyes are dancing.  You have the same look in your eyes that night on the Post Office steps.  I let out the anxiety via a deep sigh.

Five nervous minutes later I go to the bathroom and turn on the shower.  I return to find you in the buff, masculine; beautiful.  Across your back is a tattoo…they are vines that accentuate your gorgeous frame.  That’s it, I say inside my head.  I know now, I am in love.

You reach up and take off my robe.  Standing behind me you notice the tattoo across my own back.  The vibratory energy that emits from you is unbelievable.  You are pleased.  We make love under the artificial rain the shower provides.  I have never known this, felt this, understood this.

So this is the upside of love?

I am content, and determined to stay here…with you.

It is a Friday evening.  We are huddled together, on the steps by the TKTS stand that is nestled in the middle of Times Square.  There is something benevolent about our time together.  It is spiritual.  It is magnificent…it just is. 

I think to myself that love must envy us.  It so wants to animate a body, to walk around the earth as we humans do.  Give itself to another.  Unable to have that fulfilled; love has little choice left. 

It possesses us. 

Love dances around us like a child at play.  It is extreme and excitement, right here, at the crossroads of the world, huh?  The metaphoric significance of it all bounces around in my head.  The fact that all though we are amount the millions of tourist, natives, performers and commoners, is of no consequence; we are untouched.  The lights of Broadway can find things no other lights can.  Of all the stages I have ever performed on, there is nothing like being your star.  The design of Times Square promises and delivers a cutting wind.  There are a few among us; brave souls that declare their love strong enough to bare the bite of the waking wind.  The buildings are the allies of the wind, guiding it to us, love struck fools that we are…willing to show the other the cold we’ll endure for our love.

It is December.  The closing of 2009 draws nigh.  In two nights time, at the same hour, Times Square will be saturated with people christening 2010, but tonight? Tonight is for us.  Broadway lights are dancing, kissing our promise.

“Would you wanna go inside somewhere baby?” you ask as you lovingly readjust my scarf.  My teeth are chattering, my eyes tearing, but this “us,” the wind, the cold, Times Square…well it all seemed worth it.

“I’m okay.” I answer.  My voice says one thing while my chattering teeth deem me a fabricator.

“Baby -“you say in protest.  I lift my gloved hand (fingers out) to your lips and silence them.  “I don’t want to lose this My King.  This moment, this you, this “us”…it feels so good.  Let me stay in it just a while longer.”  Against your better judgment you allow this.  You pull me close to you by holding my scarf.

“You gotta take better care of yourself!” you say. “I’m gonna be so pissed if you get sick!”  I laugh to myself, as we are of the same ilk.  Hard working, hard loving.  I pull my hat down over my exposed ears.  You stare at me the entire time we are sitting there.  Are we expecting someone? The bus? A dream? An opportunity?  I am not sure, but I know, I don’t want to leave.  My nose grows cold.  I have begun the dreaded sniffles.

“That’s it baby.” you say taking charge “time to go.”  We cross Broadway and enter the station to get the 2 or 3 headed uptown.  Harlem is waiting for us.  The train is bustling with energy.  Bucket drummers, beggars, boys and girls line the platform tithing a few moments of their time, allowing others to “invade” their space.  We are facing one another.  I swear your eyes transport me to places I have never been.  I don’t care what is going on around me, how bad things hurt, how good things feel…your eyes, they are the perfect reprieve.

Before we know it we are uptown.  Harlem bustles in a different way than midtown.  In the words of Cynda Williams “you can have your Broadway, give me Lenox Avenue…”

We make our way through “little Africa”…black men of all colors saturate 116^th Street.  Our love practically lights the path to my apartment door. 

Inside we discard our armor.  I am colder than I imagined.  I shiver as you draw my bath.  I slip beneath the water.  God, how I love the feel of the water between my thighs, how you made the bubbles beautiful….just for me.  You never forget the olive oil.  You once told me how much you love the feel of my skin.  You cleanse me, from the filth of the city, the labors of the day.  This is a peace I have never known.  I never knew what it was like, trusting someone enough to discard my shields.  Not even as a child have I had this level of trust.  You have no idea what you have given; what you keep giving.

Leaving the bath you dry my supple skin.  My body shines with a happiness it only knows when you clean it.  I lay in my bed, holding the pillows and feeling the comfort that escapes me every night – unless you’re there.  You clean yourself and come to me.  You slip beneath the covers and pull me closer to you.  Tonight is just about the joy of feeling one another, loving one another.  Tonight is kisses and quiet passion.  Tonight is breathing what the other exhales.  Tonight is about the journey.  Not the one we completed apart…but the one we now begin…together…

 “Damn it!” you say over the line.  “Every time I think I have some time to myself, this damn job gets in the way.”  This came from you the 2^nd day after we met.  Being somewhat of a workaholic myself, I tell you, “its okay.  There will be more than enough time for us to spend together.”

 “I hope you’re right darling,” you say, a cloud of worry and frustration skirting your voice.  But I am confident.  Where the enthusiasm comes from?  I have no idea where I conceived this, but I carry it fully – kicking and jumping in my heart.  You fall silent.  The quiet rushes forward clogging the empty space between us.  I am blown away over you.  I have been trying to cover my desire. 

 What drives me to the edge of insanity is this reality that no matter how much I try to retain it, no matter how much I try to be cool, Ray Charles could see, I fell from the inception of our meeting. 

Our lives are busy.  We are still looking for that 25^th hour, aren’t we love?  Most of your time is spent working and sleeping…

 You have such a presence it surrounds me.  I am so grateful.  I chase the night; try to catch the stars before they’re flung into the morning sky.  You touch me internally with just the whisper of your words.  I know the difference now.  There is a major difference between the love I have created in the past and the love now generated between the two of us. 

Tell me this is okay lover…that my feelings are safe in your ears, in your hands; written on your heart.  This choice wasn’t mine…you came for me.  Love was never so intense, never so immediate.  Tell me.  I long to hear it.  The next time you are here…say it.  Say what you’ve been saying all alone with your hands, with your mouth, with your tongue…

Say it the way you grip my thighs and pull me closer when I try to pull away from the intensity of this passion; give birth to this thing between us with your words…

I love the simplicity of you, the way you tell me you are a simple man whenever my verbiage becomes too intricate.  I giggle within myself.  Amazing.  How is it that you can cause the usage of such?  I swear, before you came to get me, I never knew this kind of love.  My life is now utterly changed by your presence in it. 

In the corner of my room there sits a tiny Maltese named “Buddy.”  Saved from a home of neglect, he curls his tiny body into the tiny doggie bed and breathes easy.  Buddy, who is blind from cataracts and 13 years old, was initially for my mother.  Making the journey from Harlem to Queens Village, he sat nestled in his doggie carrier and new sweater.  I am trying to detach myself as this is for my mother, this gift, this love that Buddy is full of.  Their meeting is bittersweet.  Both my mother & Buddy are cordially, but neither wants the other.  My mother doesn’t like imperfection…neither does Buddy.  Two sniffs later and Buddy knows this is not the scent of the love he requires. 

 We are the same Buddy and me…blinded and yet seeing more than others.  Love was my cataract.  Then we found one another, and filled voids that were left by the imperfection of our lives.  Buddy, in his small stature returns me to the moments of my son’s infancy.  He only requires my love…with an abundance of love in me; it is all I have to offer.  Buddy makes missing you not so difficult,  He will readily receive the love my teenage son now shuns.  We are moving against the axis of the Earth.  In this counter motion we are privy to the spiritual plane lover.  Please know I am here.  I would not leave your arms or your love for the world.  This is our time my King.  I have waited all my life for the elixir that is your love.  I can feel the change in me already.  The betrayal of time stops here – we will embrace its pace and love one another for as long as we’re allowed.