Driving Lessons

It starts like this, how it always has.

There is your hand, there is the music, swelling in the background.

And you, you are smiling, those crooked teeth stark against the perfection of the everyday.

The dull lines of ordinary have nothing on you and your omnipresent black t-shirts, painted against the hardest chest I have ever felt in my life.

Something that tastes like a laugh rises up along your tongue, spills onto my lips, vibrates along my jaw.

I am swaying, my feet jagged across this dance floor.

Hardwood and agony intertwine. I have never been more embarrassed to be a collection of living cells.

Your arms tight around my waist, your kisses resonating against my nervous flesh as you catch me over and over again.

I’ve fallen hard but not like this before. Not with my knees pinned to the floor and palms red with the pins and needles of woe is me stinging.

If there were a way I could translate this slow motion descent into English I would, if only for you to comprehend how small I feel underneath the towering mass that is you.

Fantasy pressing me harder down, yanking my hair, talking to me with that soft baritone whisper I have become so accustomed to.

Shake me from my sleep,

The last few moments yank me from the forever and pull me into the now.

You deposit tiny kisses one two three onto my wrist one two three onto the crease of my lips.

Baby let’s go home

But I am home, home is here with you, with clunky knees and all that thigh right there below those dark wash jeans.

They don’t see us, don’t see the way we look at one another like I am inserting secrets directly into the pupils of your eyes.

Low low high- there’s that nervous laugh again.

I want to lock you up in this last twirl, you tuck me under your arm, the applause is beginning to drown out the sincerity of our moment and our sight is requested elsewhere.

Breaking the glass slippers, I step into the diamond shards and brace myself for this.

Bare those teeth for me.

Our fingers are fat zipper strips, clenching tight enough to keep us together and shroud us against the winds of terror waiting to tear us apart.

Still, I fear losing you.

I wonder if beneath my dress you can see the insecurities I hold inside of my heart.

You like to put your mouth there on my chest and tell me how beautiful I am in the middle of the night.

In the darkness you give me the most intimate parts of your touch.

You are filling up the foreground and I am the shaking, dancing girl.

I only want to love you.

How do I say thank you for this gathering when parties have always been the worst excuses for social norms?

Your arm slips around my throat, I look up, I meet that beaten mouth halfway through its journey and welcome the goodbye it brings.

Adios, friends.

I will follow your roads all the way to the bedroom we call sanctuary and I will pull my fingertips across every last inch of your skin.

Tonight, headlights drown our mistakes in light and icy roads force us off course, stuttering heart jumping almost tragedies peppering the possibility of our eternity.

I am ready for this snow, I know.