Why didn’t anyone tell me about love, about romance, about passion?
Why were the mysteries of being in love kept from me?
I never knew a love like this was possible.
Complete, utter, total drowning in a feeling of warm, liquid comfort.
Encircled by a soft blanket, a warm pool, a perfect bed.
It is not the hard passion of lust, all edges and erections,
pushing against each other,
slamming against walls, benches and floorboards.
Heavy breathing, panting, gulping in the essence of another before it disappears.
Although that has its place.
A place to start, a place to return when anger nips at the heels
and frustration creeps in.
But lust isn’t all there is to love.
There is more.
There is the opening up, breaking down, loose liquid surrender
of giving yourself to another.
The hard mask of politeness, of significance,
of brilliance falls to the floor,
exposing the true nature of our humanity.
Without shame, without comparison,
without anything except the wonder of being given such a gift from another.
Without clothes our differences are exposed
and we revel in the delight of another creature so similar and yet so foreign.
The mole on the back, the dent in the hip, the line on the neck,
the shape of the instep are all unfamiliar.
Hands with different fingers, eyes with different flecks of colour,
hair of different texture and skin with a strange aroma.
Fascinating and delightful.
Willing to be explored, appreciated and investigated
without excuses for the deviation from the norm.
A curved belly, a rounded bottom, uneven nipples flushed in arousal.
A feeling of expansion, of opening up keeps growing.
A sensation that pushes beyond the edges of a physical shape.
The open green rolling fields of a mind
that stretch beyond the edges of the horizon
and the blue blue sky of the soul that flies off into outer space
and the deep navy waters of the ocean of the heart
that spill and lap and storm from shore to shore encircling the world,
surging and retreating, with the phases of the moon.
The fields, the sky and the sea.
Mind, soul and heart.
Where is the body?
It is finite and solid and has edges and limits.
It grows older and changes without interference.
It is visible and recognizable and always on display.
But a mind … but a soul … but a heart can be anything I decide.
Not an amorphous concept without substance
Not the puff of smoke from an extinguished candle,
but huge and infinite, beyond what the eye can see.
Changing over time, eroding like the chalk cliffs of France,
moving like the shifting plates of the ocean floor,
erupting from volcanoes,
ice cliffs falling into the sea as the weather warms.
Seeing love only in terms of our body is pushing it into in a too small vessel.
Trying to stuff the ocean into a tea-cup
or the sky into a balloon
or the fields into garden pot.
Our bodies are a tiny frame giving us only a thumbnail of who we really are.
•••
This is so gorgeous…I had to read it twice…
You’re just awesome, sister.
Thank you Michelle ♥
I read something you write and I always think how lucky I am to know and consider a friend someone so extraordinary. I always have to read it twice because the beauty awes me so much. In simpler terms I was reading this laying next to the love of my life for 23 years as he snores and I remembered waking up from a nightmare at 3 am this morning and curling into his arms to ward off the scary but scared, half asleep I remembered how perfectly we fit and I slept safe the rest of the night. Thank you for sharing your amazing talent, your heart even the broken pieces, for always leading with your heart, for always making me want to be a better person and most of all being my friend.
Rena, thank you so much for such a beautiful compliment ♥
I’m so pleased you’ve found your safe place x