finding love

his fault

in

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i blamed him entirely.

it was meant to be just a glass of wine. a good story. and  goodnight.

when we met we kissed cheeks once in greeting and i pulled away to sit down, but he pulled me back. kissed the other side, said that's how it was done where he came from.

and i was charmed by this.

we sat on opposite ends of a very large booth.

and i can remember almost nothing we spoke of. only that he moved closer, pulled me towards him.

how his knee touched my knee. and how i was surprised by this. surprised by my own delight.

how his hand reached for my hand. and it was...delicious.

and when our mouths finally met, it was one silent of course after another.

how our first night together he turned to me, still half-alseep and asked if i wanted to hug, the sounds of those words all sloshy in his mouth.

and i nodded, let him pull me close, knowing that hug was entirely the wrong word.

but i was nuts about him for that word alone. because i knew what he meant and i liked what he meant and hell, if he wasn't a man who made every bit of my body go soft with wanting.

and i blamed him entirely.

 

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so many questions

in

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here's the thing.

i want to know everything.

i want to know which side of the bed you sleep on when it's just you. and how you take your coffee--or your tea--or your oversized glass of orange juice. i want to study how your eyelashes cut the air when you look down and learn the movement of your fingers across the sunday times. i want to count the ways in which you laugh--in which i can make you laugh. i want to know how old you were when you first felt the sting of heartache--were you seven, ten, twenty-one? what was her name? the color of her hair? what was the first lie you told? the last? tell me about the first time you made love--the color of the morning-after as it angled into the room, as it cut across her back. tell me your first great loss. your secret shame--the thing you think makes you damaged in that irreparable way. teach me how to undress you from across a room. how to settle and silence your chaos. teach me to clear a space for you. always. let me love the cracked and dirty and fatally-flawed version of yourself. tell me if you believe in past lives and why. is there an image that feels older than yourself? i want to know what you cook and how you cook it and if you play a record while you do so. i want to know if there is a room in the apartment that is better for dancing than the others. tell me what you get from the corner store night after night. does the man behind the counter know your name?  i want to know if there is a color to your grief. is it a wooly overcoat heavy on your shoulders or a shadow that stands a perpetual ten feet back? i want to know what you're most afraid of--not what you say you're most afraid of, but what is too terrifying to even utter aloud.

i think you think i want too much. that i demand too much. that i...expect too much.

that you'll never be enough to fill the space of all my wants and needs.

and i want to shake you. tell you you were enough for me that first night we met. and you've been enough every day since.

it's not a question of enough or not enough. it's a question of wanting to know more. of wanting to sit with your hand on mine and have that be everything.

 

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waiting for morning

in

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i used to think i couldn't sleep next to the men i cared about because i was afraid they'd leave.

it took some time to learn that i wasn't so much afraid they'd leave as utterly excited that they would stay, and night would turn to morning, and i'd wake to two coffees and a shared newspaper and a filled silence.

and it was that excitement that kept me from sleep, stretching the night forever in front of me.

so i'd lie there, eyes open, like a child, whispering,

wake up, wake up, i'm ready to play now. 
image by Emma Hartvig