a list of one
April 7, 2011
All I must release in order to love a good man, a fiery lover, the partner with whom I will celebrate freedom — much to name. Fear of finding my equal; material opulence over the spirit’s satisfaction; blindness to real needs and the kind of arrangement that would meet them. Opening to receive the one who feels my desire from a distance, who responds with touch, words requiring no translation other than the body. Skin and speech of limbs, earth catches fire when you look at me. Until I learn the lines of you, grooves of mind and thought, vocal notes of your desire — I will not know if I want you. But all else I can prepare for. Because I am no longer an open wound awaiting the medicine of a lover’s kiss, I decide now to see your every cell, every movement, for the gifts they bring to me: colorless, ageless, timeless. Music from your throat moistens my resolve to stay separate, the depth of pale masculine matching my dark female heat. You remind me that the enlightened are wealthy, objects fade while we grow in brilliance. I have awoken now from the childish dream that anyone could love me well. Hundreds of men have been narrowed to a list of one: you. What wild flavor and knowledge will your being, your body, bring to me? The moment I taste you it will not occur to me to keep you, to swallow you whole. I am no longer asleep but watch you wakefully, see clearly all you know to give, how you reach for me with fingers of energy that caress and vanish in time with my rhythms of closeness and solitude. I let you possess me because I cannot be possessed, my nails graze your flesh as you are impossible to contain. The temporal our lasting ecstasy.
© 2011 Tahminah Zaman
