today, the embers of torture in the flame that we were,
is lost in the power of the burn that was us.

I close my eyes, my phone by my side, and I am content
letting my body feel the motions of drowning in thoughts that center you.

they are mostly replays, devoid of the potency that is feeling in the present.
I feel the sweet that was our loving.

without the edges that cut. without the careless motions that hurt.
for they are now lost in the magic of time. just as the magic of us is lost in time.

but as I lay, I search. flipping through the pages of you & I.
of myself & others, for a heat so potent that it seared.

so I remember. I close my eyes, and let my mind take me on a journey.
I watch. as an audience. as the movie.

***

“Have you ever gotten a hickey?”

My response to his question is a roll of eyes as I bring the cigarette to my mouth and breathe in with it. The air holds the smoke I release as soft constellations in front of my face for a second, and their quirky shapes dissipate on my skin like invisible shadows that never were just as fast. I turn to face him, and he is fiddling with the pack of cigarettes in his hands. I wish he would light one for himself. I like to watch him smoke.

“Would you like me to give you one?” I shrug, and he is quiet.

Music is playing in low tones from my phone, and I am content in this moment. We are the only ones on the top of this two-floor building he lives in, and I try to picture him here. He has talked a lot about how much he likes it here. This rooftop. The sky is dark, but there is a light from down the street that lazily rests on the blue geepee tank in front of us. I can feel every pickle of the night air on my skin. I am aware, yet not. I am present, but really, I am lost in this feeling. It is beautiful. It makes me feel powerful. It renders me powerless. I am tempted to check my phone to see how much longer I have with him because I still have to return home, but I do not. I look down instead at both our legs, and they are bare. The brown shorts I have on ends just a few inches below my butt, and his, a three-quarter grey shorts with the most perfect fit, has a hem that brushes his knee when he stands upright.

Like right now. He has raised himself to his full height and has turned all his attention on me. He puts his hands on my shoulders, and I have my right hand extended from both our bodies to keep the cigarette away from us. One of his hands leaves my shoulder to reach for the cigarette, and I am still reeling from the brush of his fingers against mine when he brings the stick to his mouth and takes a long drag. He turns his face away from me to expel the smoke, but as if on second thought, he turns back to face me and blows the rest of it in my face.

I keep my eyes open, and I take it. I want to kiss him.
“Would you like me to give you a hickey?”

I grind my teeth at his second ask and push myself higher on the bench I rested my back on. It gets me closer to him, but I want to distance myself from the person knowing him was making me become. A person I did not know yet, but felt the most home in. I wanted to breathe an air different from one his presence had already permeated. I wanted some friction. I wanted him to help me breathe. I want to breathe him in.

“I’m dark in complexion. I couldn’t get a hickey even if I tried to”. He raises his hand and teases a light hold on my neck even before I am done talking, and I hold my breath. I try to breathe, but it is labored. Too calculated. He closes his hand around my neck some more, and I hold myself still.

He lowers his head, and I feel the heat of his breath on my face. I do not know what I expect – maybe a little prodding of his tongue? Maybe the gentle sucks that I have started to get used to with him? But it is none of that. He sucks. Hard. Slow, then fast. Then gentle. His pace is uncoordinated, and the sensation is overpowering, painful, heady, and I push my neck into his face almost involuntarily. I find myself holding on to his neck; to push him away, or to keep his mouth on my neck, I am not sure.

It ends, and I am rudely brought back to earth with the first gust of air that replaces the heat of his mouth. The stars behind my eyes makes them heavy and unwilling to open, and I am shaky from how confused I feel. I am excited, painfully so, but I withdraw myself from his body and let my right thigh push itself into my left thigh.

I ask him if there is a hickey on my neck, and he brings his phone out to take a picture. His hands on my neck is captured in the frame, and the formerly clear skin on my neck that he sucked on now sports a dark red-purple bruise.

I like it.
I wish I had that picture.

There is an interruption in my thoughts.
of another man.

of a kiss so soft. so gentle.
one that progressed so fast I was quickly forgetting
the dim lights were those of a restaurant, not of a room.
so fast I wanted to untuck the pink shirt with ends
that his belt had trapped just below his waist.

I wanted my palm on the bare skin of his chest.
I wanted warmth from him to quell some of the heat
that was quickly overpowering a will I had fancied myself having.
the touch of his lips on mine was a discovery. a rapture. bliss.

***

“What do you want from me?” I push an errant braid from my face at this man’s question and put my hands on the cold glass of beer that was in front of me. I needed to keep my hands busy.
“You tell me. What do you want?” He shakes his head in exasperation, and I laugh. Answering direct questions is not a strong suit of mine, and he has mentioned his tiredness of it several times today. We are having lunch at a restaurant, and while I am dressed like a woman who had full intentions to be outside, he is dressed in his work clothes. He looks very good in them. He looks normal, really. He is a man who is comfortable and confident in his skin and desires. Of course, he looked good to me.

“I want to fuck you. I would like to fuck you.” I nod at his response and raise my drink to my mouth. The sour taste is welcome, and I push it back and forth on my tongue as I mull over his answer. His desire to fuck me is no news, and I had asked him the same question to give myself time and to think about an answer I could give him. I also liked hearing him say that he wanted me.

“I don’t know what I want with you.” He nods his head at my response as if it was just the answer he expected, and I change the topic to something else I do not recall now. I check the time shortly after that conversation and decide that I need to start heading back home. It was getting close to rush hour, and I was not trying to be stuck in traffic. He agrees that I should start heading back, and we both stand.

There is a man who has come to sit in the small room we were at in the restaurant, and I find myself thinking that he is attractive. I forget about him as we leave the small room and head towards the door of the restaurant. There is a corner just before the hallway that would take us into the main restaurant and eventually the door that leads outside it, and it is at this place he asks that I pause, that he wants to hug me. I oblige, and we hug. I am oddly fascinated by the feel of his dick against my stomach, but I decide that I will not say any of it. I am readying to excuse myself from his embrace when he puts his lips on mine.

Like a slumbering cat that was given an unexpected stroke, I start. I think of retreating. I open my mouth to say something about how he should not be kissing me. Not here. Not at all, in fact, but all it does is open me to the softness of his lips, the intoxicating way he smelled, and how much I wanted to be in this embrace for longer. There are people passing by us, and while public displays of affection have always been something I delighted in simply because I liked to touch the people I was with when I wanted to, this was a man that was not supposed to be with me. This was a man that was not supposed to be kissing me. Not in private, and certainly not in public.

But I wanted him. I wanted him so bad in that moment.
and now there is a rush of images.
his eyes on my breasts.
his hands palming my ass, then guiding me closer to him.
my hands. snaking between us. palming him. feeling him.

I would later war with self to qualify what it was that I felt in that moment.
desire?
desire.
I would afterwards blame it for my actions.
for my decision to end things so abruptly.
to not explore a heat that felt so familiar
because I was not ready to feel it with him.

***

and it is back to the first. before the interruption.
the heat of a desire in naivety. reckless.
I let my body remember.
my mouth on his.
his fingers finding home in my orifices.
my mouth. my pussy.
oh. the feeling of fingers driving into me relentlessly
once the rhythm that would evidently fuck me over was found
from how I writhed against him.

I see it. the way the concentration that formerly had my body
in tight knots dissolves from my features.

I see just when my body becomes its own. surrendered to the heights
of a pleasure I had never known by myself.

I can almost taste the delicious abandon that had me twisting
and covering my face to fight just how I felt in that moment.

I felt powerless.
I felt powerful.

a reliving of the feeling of palms familiarizing themselves with the curves of my ass in fast raps makes me shut my eyes tight in hopes of holding on to the memory.

them arched in wanting for more.
more heat. more pain. more surrender.
an obliging.

every trap of my nipples between his fingers renews a lust that was never lost.

and I’m wet.
a reward. a wanting. thirsting.

And now I think of her.
The heavy flirting. the touches on places that wouldn’t ordinarily spark arousal.

but it is her.

And I remember the day our bodies are under the same covers. how in sync, our hands found breasts that already were heavy with anticipation. how the rise of her nipples with every tweak from my fingers made mine react similarly.

the taste of texture and her desire when I guide her to my mouth. the taste of release and surrender when my lips touch hers —

that is the day it starts.

***

On days when I am spent and drowning and seeking and confused, I would think back fondly on good times. I would think on the first time I was touched by a person I yearned for before I understood what it meant to yearn. I would wonder if it was my feelings that made every moment with him draining in the most exciting of ways, or if it simply was the naivety of experiencing intoxicating pleasures for the first time.

I would realize physical intimacy as the drug that I have let it become. And then I would wish to experience the release my lovers felt when they bared their hearts to me. I would wonder about relaxing in affection, not running from it. And then I would choose to find solace in simply being their light. And then I would relapse, in anguish and in desire for the base act of a hard fuck, and let my body find its pleasure in my hands, or in another’s. With every moan, I would let myself release. I would let myself feel everything I never allowed myself to feel. Everything I never knew to say in words.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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