The strum

There you were,

when I would ask you

to sit close

but you wanted to sit,

leaning against me.

You had unbuttoned your blouse

and held my hands in your hands

to warm them.

You talked in a polite melodic

high-pitched manner,

evocative over topic.

Spacing your sentences

further apart

then the words themselves

as if conversation

were stepping aside

to reveal a more glorious array.

Eventually, almost in spite

of the conversational cadence,

you would free my hands

from the cover of yours.

As if heated doves

would naturally rise into the sky,

my right hand

found your left breast waiting,

unguarded,

actually passively bursting

to meet my touch.

The rest of your body

gave me that message.

The greeting was slow

but deliberate.

The pride of ample would declare.

You reseated yourself against me,

almost aligned.

Your voice, by tone,

was noticeably down shifted,

slowing in the pronouncement

of your words.

The topic not lost but spoken

from more deeply within you.

In time, you would take back

the weight of your breast,

out of my hand

and advance me just to the areola,

not the prime

but the circular span

before the rise.

You would somehow ask me

to walk with you there,

in small circles

as we continued to talk.

I selected certain fingers

to oblige and to anoint you

along the way.

And so we would continue to move,

fingers to nipple,

skin-to-skin,

nervous system-to-nervous system,

until we were secured right there,

going nowhere else.

On the way,

your voice changed within you,

reflecting in reply,

but not saying directly,

many states of your person.

It would respond and release

unsaid things through words,

which stood for

but did not make clear mention

from what you really said.

Eventually, home would arrive,

your voice, now breathy and lower,

would reveal something compressed

that needed the light of speech

and the fresh air of being said.

An intimacy of self let out,

onto the presence of another being,

sometimes, from ages past,

sometimes

from just a sense of being alive.

Flow was not so much the words

as measure.

But now the words floated by

in an ocean’s presence.

Where my fingers touched,

an initial island arose,

only then to recede

as if the tides of relaxation

were going out.

No matter how slow the motion,

each fingertip was met

without further purpose

or distraction.

Clock or counter did not interpret

towards a measure in time.

If there were a pause,

as if to ask,

this question sprung from,

“why aren’t all moments

like these to start with?”

But for then, too complicated

to create a response.

This is what is

and the pauses

became circumspect.

Slowly we, as entities,

would fill and

what was empty

would become full.

If I appeared as the strum,

in time, the music would last

far beyond the song.

Eventually a page would turn,

a songbook sung,

as messengers to each other,

we would part without reluctance,

for the conversation

had moved beyond the words.

Both of us were seen

in a different light

considered out of sight,

the vision lingered,

layered into a blend

with normal life.

There was no strength

of memory

but more a self-agreement

to be open from the strum.