Curiosities

I definitely am in the middle of a major project. Of course, this is about the sixth or seventh time I've attempted a novel, not counting my attempts in high school. But, for the first time, not to count my fan fiction, which I may or may not give you all someday, I truly am connecting with my characters. I am prepared to fully invest myself in this endeavor. I really want this to make the cut.

I am, of course, going to continue with this little side venture of writing and recording all my poems for you all, my little audience. I just wanted you to know and wish me well on my enterprise. I am very excited, and I really do hope I have the perseverance to complete this. Anyways, onto my topic of the week.

I've been struggling with love for a while now. Lust and love are one of those things that are very similar and often confused for one another, and right now, I can't tell the difference. I'm feeling one of them. Maybe both. Here is what happened one night when I was feeling an odd cocktail of the two.

My Continuing Curiosity with Your Back

Several weeks ago - counted by several workloads, dozens of truck loads of
sod and soil packed into Jeeps and Fords, many punches in and punches out -
you followed me out of my truck into a stranger's house, the stepfather of our mutual friend,
a party for a sister.

Despite our obvious differences, quality of life, treatments of our bodies
(I will never understand the draw of tobacco) among them, we talk avidly on many subjects.
We waste away the hours unraveling our brains in a pile until, in our midst,
there is a pile of yarn from all the opinions and experiences and ideas we've detailed.
Finally, like the zombie apocalypse, the conversation turns to the inevitable subject
of body art.

The stepfather, the motorcycle enthusiast, take no time in pointing out
his obvious sleeve of dark, daring design, flames and skulls and metal.
I look over at another piece of art, a more feminine piece on
a brusque, frank speaking aunt, admiring and examining.
When I look back to you for a reassuring smile, I am almost disappointed.

Until you do the unexpected.

Your shirt is hiked up to your neck, and the pulse of my blood in my ears,
it is deafening, but it is nothing to the feel of my nerves flooding with mercurial fire.
My breath is snagged in all the sudden new ways
that I desire you.

That smooth, muscled, masculine, rub-your-hands-all-over sinfulness of the planes
that are your back, that I can see in that instant, where
tendons coil and attach and stretch, and all in the space
of five seconds, my face is the color of a Bloody Mary, warmth singing in
my cheeks and an unnameable place in my abdomen, between the apex of my thighs
and the depression of my cave of a navel.

I do my very best to shadow my blushing, ducking my head to hide behind my bangs.
My breath comes in pants, soft and silent, and I work hard,
trying to slow the canter in my thoroughbred chest.

But before I glance away, an inky incomprehensible word
forms over the valley between your scapulae. My interest crests, like a spike,
a prick on the polygraph test of a compulsive liar.
Just as my mind starts the process of picking apart the letters and forming a word,
the cotton of your shirt descends, the curtain at the finale of the opera,
and my breath slows to symphonic sighs.

Someday,
though only God knows when,
I will find the time to read the word splayed across your back.