Understanding
In years, I had never understood the keening and whining for soft caress, blossoming lips, or soft fingertips along one's skin. Rough calloused grip had always been fine, harsh marks and sharp bites had always sated it enough. But oh, how only I understood it too well. Like tasting sugar for the first time from the center of a thick cane. Lapping and foaming for it, the feeling of soft skin soothing weeping scars and kissing ones yet to form to a gentle lullaby of ache.
There was no satisfaction now, and it felt like melding into a gentle cry consistent of those I once mocked. Welling just in the depths of my throat and croaking from cracked lips. The words never came quite to the volume I'd expected them to, soft whispers and desperate whimpers. The tears I felt never came to burn my eyes pink, though they always lingered at the back somewhere. My hands searched in the pad of every fingertip for the tenderness I'd felt only that once, gripping and pulling. Praying to a god I'd never believed in for that same brush of skin on mine.
Begging for god wasn't the ride phrase, pleading didn't fit the strength it needed to possess. A yearning, a nauseating throbbing deeply seared in the flesh and bones of my being. It wouldn't leave until I'd felt it again- even then it would linger. A knawing predator on my most instinctual desires, one that not even I could fend off from my heart. At first it was a lingering tingle of the touch, a soft whisper and a ghost. It churned and developed, the whispering growing and warping into a wrenching cry for the touch I'd felt only once for seconds. A touch that had been so brief I wondered if I'd felt it, but the soft ache in my heart proved true to its word. The pads of soft fingers seem to never leave my cheeks.
Whispering and echoing softly in my mind of what they had done to me. The god that I didn't believe in became a familiar name on my lips, dripping like a soured venom from my tongue. In anger that perhaps, they had been the cause of my misfortune. The cause of soft, loathsome fear scorched into my veins that bled gently. They weren't the lifeblood, I couldn't say that. Not the vermillion of my arteries, no.. the soft crimson that left the stained puddles in one's mind of what once could've been. What once was and what will be. The dryness of the tongue, the flash of startled eyes accompanied by a primal flick of pearl teeth.
The darkest blood is the blood that surges the body when the instinct clutches the heart. Rushing back with a mad thunder like a march in your ears, the one I hear when I'm startled from the dream of the same soft touch. Chasing it to oblivion and into melancholy monologues to the sun and the birds.
The droplets of baby blue eyes and the drip of melted chocolate gazes always warranted some attention, but never this much. Never a frantic search into the tiny pools of crystalline waterfalls that the blue eyed woman bared. Not once a dive to the pits of thick, dark earth that the brown eyed mistress flashed above the rim of dark glasses just past the cup of coffee at pink lips. Tireless searching and energy wasted tearing into the colors of an iris, just like plucking the petals of one. Staring as they fall and float away down the crystal stream, finding its end at a spot of chocolate earth to bare its pigment on until it soon became a part of it.
The twitch of finicky fingertips at the thud of a book, gaze flashing around for the features that soothed them most. If they found none, they made new. Gazes flirting with soft flashes and tender flicks. Glowing gently and brushing accidentally, they made due. Never needing a name or a time, just assurance at need. Not more, not less, not but just enough for the frail desire to be pacified one more day.
A touch a natural longing born with a person, the human condition that lingers with each at a gentle brush. Like the brief fog of wet breath against biting winter frosts. One that man has learned only how to conquer by the soft brush of cheeks against lips and the feather-light brush of soft pastels brushing one another. The condition of all humans either by proof or admittance is that of the adoration of touch to soothe the desire they all burn for. So why in the name of that god can't I feel mine?
I remember it like it had just happened, the soft touch of mine running over the trace of a pelvic bone and past the dip of a navel. The sound of minty breath hitching in that raspy, exhausted tone. Body shifting to lay down upon mine and ear to my heartbeat. The lullaby to those of us who will never hear it sung. The gentle thrum of nature's clock ticks, a rhythmic thud to match a racing pulse point startled by sudden warmth of lips. Each word exchanged whispered on a floating breath, the closest we would ever come to murmuring our prayers.
A broken rasp, a tired murmur. Each word spoken in a smooth passion that only we would share. Never with the world, never with friends. A language all of our own, staggering on barren breaths and humid huffs. To others, our lips would always look cracked and neglected. To each other, they looked like a delicate heaven only we were privileged to know. A haven for love that could only dance among soft breaths and ghosting fingertips, a love shattered if ousted outside the world of two.
Roll your dice, they say. Take a chance, they say, but have they ever looked eye to eye with snake eyes? Feeling poison run loose in your body, choking slowly. Feeling the ticking clock slow to a stop. All by chance. Then it evens out, smoothed like sweet satin in your burning body. Trembling like a newborn fawn all to do is look with eyes of one, peering softly as damp hands cup warm cheeks and thumbs trace lips.
The cracks split open wider, it felt- vermillion dripping down from how far they were stretched in the twist of features. Everything bare, open and awaiting the soothing of warm fingertips. Finally, the soothing- the ghosting heat. The lingering touch came to quell the burning, cooling heatburnt flesh beneath them as bodies melted down into one another. Rosy red lips matched the pastel tone of the satin skin beneath- marking ownership delicately.
Cries echoed, nails tearing welts into delicate feminine figures. They were the mark of the lower, who bore no teeth to their lover. Each would wear them for days, forgetting their once declared innocent lives. One would bare a wolfish smirk- that of a devil in Prada and cologne. The other a sheepish smile, baring their throat to the wolf for their mark.
None would know their intimacy, so simply only friends as many would guess. Never lovers, never sharp toothed among satin skin. Pretty smiles could never be the devil's, never so fiendish- only assumed. The truth was one scarf or high-collar shirt away, painted blued red atop pale pastel. They say people grow bolder with time, perhaps for the adrenaline- perhaps only to do. The mixture of both was a dopamine high, eyes wide open and pupils blown through the iris ring.
Muffled fragile cries slipped beneath mahogany doors, the barrier between exposition and innocence. Strong grips carried heaven on the tip of fingers, hell in their palms. One was gentler, clouded eyes locked with the other as cries for saints left tender lips. With each twist of a wrist, the body twisted- a musician and their instrument. The show remained ever-private, symphony wrote on instinct for only one.
One could swear not even god could induce such euphoria, body bent and bowed atop silken covers or hard wooden splinters. Their vision rarely brought sight, focused on a singular soul above or beneath them- crying pleas falling upon deafened ears. The loving strokes cooed, singing softly back to the trembling lips they molded.
On other days, fingertips twitched in the lowlight. The pale skin was drenched with a vermillion hue, tapping the hardwood beneath them with white bone knuckles. It was a rhythmic noise, constant and fleeting. One of tired thought and echoing regrets, tasting copper on their bitten lip with a swipe of the tongue timely with the tapping. They would be home soon, surely- and the bloodstains would have to be washed out of the wood. Can you wash blood out of wood?
Washed clean like it never appeared there and the day had simply been erased. Cooing words had nearly done so entirely, satin palms smoothing cold cheeks back to their appreciated heat.
