Remembering the first time...with a woman

I’ll keep this day, hands bound under floorboards of memory. In a locked room, too scared to open, until the curve of your neck gave me courage. This moment - a defining event...a civil war won, the fall of Vicksburg, there will only ever be a before and after this coming together.

Today we abandon our parent’s perception of normal for this sacred unfolding.

Fumbling fingers, nervous giggles, the tracing of you. Tranquil afternoon light reaching through curtains, waiting to be discovered in triangles across your breast.

The hem of the sounds we make together, stitch the fabric of our discovery and our revelation. My mouth, and yours. We pull this blanket of permission around us.

Reading poetry over naked bodies, I think Neruda must have felt this too.

You write sonnets about mathematics, and I silently thank Euclid for geometry. The bend of your hips. The arch of my back. Congruent angles have heartbeats now.

You teach me that touching isn’t the closest you can get to someone. But we try, and try, and again. We push against each other, your energy under pressure, trapped too long. Unarmored, unmoored, unleashed.

No one can judge us here, these hours will disappear like incense smoke but the scent will linger for days.

We dance with every childhood question and find one answer in our rhythm - this is who we were all along.

Shame is waiting and we know it. Our practice in connection is safe if we stay just like this. And we do.

How do other people survive this chaos?

Contrition can take us tomorrow. But for now you grasp my cheek, there is a reaching around of arms. Your lips find my ear - a magnet. We shift on top of open notebooks, pages creasing, tearing, and we let them.

Through my hair you whisper simply…”more”