Speak my name into my mouth, exhaust and drape me in your shirts so when I sneak up from you within the middle of the night to bake something scrumptious your skin is still against my skin, I want to carry you with me. So that your smell is still across my shoulders, your breath dangling my chest. I can’t think of much better than a midnight chilled bedroom with your touch falling just above my knees. Cold ankles, and your taste sitting on my tongue.
In a few years time I hope to have someone (preferably you) tell me my tongue tastes of vanilla bean. Or that my lips leave a meringue after taste. And that my sheets smell like the chilly, pungent air from outside wafting the cookies in the oven against my legs. God. I just want to sleep on strawberry truffles and to hear someone, the same someone that lays down with me every night, bury their nose into my neck and be able to tell me with one breath in word for luscious word what I had baked that day.
And sometimes, when my body’s lover had long past fallen asleep, I would shrug into my raincoat and find myself a block south at my cafe whisking away the faint strength left in my limbs from the binds. I called it my cafe because I truly believed it owned if nothing but a peel of my heart, at least that, and I to it as I liked to think had engraved myself into it’s espresso nooks, that the exhaustion of exhales that had parted my lips joined heart-fully with the ceramic clinks. I called it my cafe because once my bed no longer held me at home, the drizzling of the pastel machines matched word for word the rain water, and no longer did I long for the smell of his skin but rather that of the cafe’s lingering against me as I sat. A conflict of lovers, oh but what a delicious affair it was. After all, how long could I think it a comfort when knees and shins and thigh and toes become one, that our legs blended together became indistinguishable, isn’t that what everyone sought after? To become one with another is too tragically common. No, what I so desired was to feel your legs slide a chill along mine as of the sheets wrinkling to my stir. The absence but presence of what laid beside me.
And sometimes, a stranger would waltz in to share my novel hour, for any lover of mine knows an hour for sleep is an hour wasted of coffee habits. Most nights I had brought my tastes along with me, all you had ever asked for was my body, so I figured it quite alright to see to the night with the rest. A light bruise on the bridge of a nose suggested, perhaps, a reader, an idealist, a romanticist, for what other ungodly reason would he share my company at such an hour? A grizzly jaw, reaching for the honey, the sugar, the milk all without looking up from the mug, a sultry date for the evening. These were dangerous qualities, see, because I must have tip toed to find them. If one could catch me such as this, I would, as I made my exit, slip into my pocket the light square of cloth their mug had left it’s impression on, a deep ring of coffee stained against it. And I would bring it home, I would bring it back and I would script the date against the corner as not to forget and I would crawl back with you, crawl back into the scatter I had left and slowly, thoughtfully, I would sleep.
The next morning, with fingered blemishes at my hips and the chill still at my ankles, I would fix us coffee and sit against the window sharing small talk with the stripped branches, and I would find myself the tiny, crumpled napkin - coffee bean touching my tongue, still. And as I sat I would smooth the edges. And just as you left my sight, I would rest my mug down along the painted espresso moon, fitting perfectly within it’s limits.
You had only asked for my body, and last night, while my own slept beside yours, you see, I fell in love at a coffee shop.
The first thing I think to ask any potential lover is: “But do you understand the significance of a coffee shop?”
Back on this topic I’m sorry but just how does a writer fall in love with someone that doesn’t share that depth with words and outward emotions spilling and toppling and tripping all over the place. Tripping over ourselves tripping over the love constantly needing to form and wrap our lips around some sort of idea that just might clarify how much it is we feel. As if it were even possible. How do you communicate with them? How do you communicate that love if they cannot talk back? Better yet how can you accept that the insanity to what you feel will never so much as stumble off the tip of your tongue, but you will try and you will keep trying and you will have to swallow it back every single time. It will never reach them. Even tongue to tongue, even lip locked even inseparable, what if it doesn’t reach them? How do I reach you if I cannot communicate in the ways that make sense to me, in the only ways I can think to. When I stir my coffee, when the spoon clinks and clinks and clinks again against the bottom of that mug, can’t you hear it saying I love you? When I walk through the door and my nose is numb to the touch and my lungs are in a flume of blizzard and a held breath and I release it right as our eyes meet in the kitchen. Don’t you feel that? Do you feel that without me saying a word? Almost as if it were a breeze through the room. I study you. I watch you. I am learning you if you could only understand that the taste of someone, their taste can go so much further than the taste itself. How do you render that taste how do you really savor that taste other than immersing yourself in one another constantly the constant passion you form it to ink you plaster it you print it you script it you jostle it into tattered pages and the taste is no longer just a taste. Do you understand that? Does it make sense to you? When I tap my fingers against the table I’m telling you I’ve missed you, I’m happy you’re home and my knuckles will ache like a bad case of cracks that pass around classrooms and subways for your lips. Or the way I tuck my hair, do you notice? Don’t you know it all means something? Don’t you know that I am telling you what I feel with every thing that I do? Don’t you know that telling is so much more than saying? Our bodies can only go so far. I want my tongue to be all that wets your lips after a days work and I want you to know, I want you to know the sound of bare feet skipping across the floorboards when it’s pitch black, when you’ve got no sight at all, when I wont say a word, when I will just stand, that I’ve loved you. Tell me you can hear it. Tell me you understand. Please tell me you understand.
Is it too much to ask for kisses on my ankles before I fall asleep? Is it okay if I rub your back for you and close my eyes and feel comforted and eased because I know how that touch feels, I will even let you fall asleep before I do. I just want a hand on my waist while I bake at 3 in the morning, you know my urges. I want both hands. I want fingers imprinted into my skin with a kiss on the back of my shoulder that says “I’m up, it’s early as hell and some part of you is insane for finding this the time to cook, but god do I love you.” I just want to hear that my butt looks cute in those undies. I want one of your shirts to be tossed over to me when I’m changing and there’s no sliver of light coming through the blinds anymore. I want a kiss on my tummy while I’m up late reading and for you to fall asleep with your head against it because I can always feel my heartbeat just there. I just want you to put up with the orchestras and symphonies that will clearly be blasting loud enough to keep your eyelids from drooping just because I get those moods. Those moods come a lot. I just want you to run my bath water. I want you to crawl in with me. Okay? And I just want my hair to be played with after we shower, even if it’s only for a few minutes. That’s alright. Braid it a few times. Let the water drip between your fingers, just don’t let it travel down my back. You should know I don’t like that. Maybe some days I could come home from work and you could wrap me up nice and snug and even if I beg to let go you refuse because lovins are just more important. Just don’t do that when the cookies are ready. Because I will be upset. I want you to let me see your ankles, and accept that I will comment your knees or your hands more than you will care to understand. I open my eyes when I kiss. I do that a lot. Just be okay with it. Look back sometimes. Just accept that some nights are classy nights and they do require expensive wines and unrealistic shopping binges for more hot chocolate even though it’s already in the cupboard. Realize that I will come home with a new blanket at least once a week. Curl up with me in it. Cozy is never a bad thing. Kiss me when your friends are around alright? Just do that. Because I like that. Please be okay with the fact that I talk a lot. I talk so much. I can talk for days on end. Just listen. Listen to me because sometimes I just get these cravings to ramble for the rest of my life. And you are loved if you get to see it. That means I love you okay. Just never let me fall asleep cold. Never let me fall asleep unhappy, and especially not hungry (though of course I will take care of that).
I just need a healthy rant.
Sigh, okay I feel better.
I want to make hot chocolate and let the kettle scream and scream until it is depleted as I am, and I will set two mugs on the counter and let the extra rest and set and cool. I will set the table for two, I will pour your wine and I will pour mine and if you do not finish yours, let me sip it off for you. I could use it. I will leave the bedside closest the door all for you, even if you do not come to bed. Even if you do not come to bed.
Thinking about actually being able to study and explore someone excites me so much. The most intimate and tiniest of things just get me so anxious. And I mean actually watching them, taking in every tiny little aspect of their body while it’s living right there with you. To watch the skin stretch along their rib cage whenever they take in a breath. To watch if their lips move even just for a few words while they’re reading, to watch and see if any emotion strikes them from the page. To watch someone’s cheeks fill up furiously with a flushed red, splotching their neck and their chest and their shoulders and every which way it spreads. To watch the skin of their lips tear right when they’re pulled apart from one another, and actually watch the corners of their mouths curve noting when exactly the dimples dig in. To hold their palm and watch their knuckles roll while their fingers fidget against yours. To watch the exact moment someone’s eyes glaze over when tears are swelling up their eyelids. To watch their limbs tremble and their teeth chatter when a chill slides through the room. To watch the muscles in their back contract when they stretch and their body just slightly shake for that brief and calm second they lose control. To watch their habits when they’re laughing so hard it’s difficult to catch their breath, what they do with their hands, their toes, their lips, their eyes, their bodies. To watch the water drip from damp, showered hair wherever it travels off to. To study their expressions shifting from disgust, to irritation, to fluster, to sympathy or to disappointment. To watch them get goosebumps. To press your fingers into their skin and watch it fade to a perfectly imprinted white before the blood rushes back. To watch their stomach jump when they have the hiccups. I don’t know. Such little things could keep me content and locked up in a room gone nearly mad with a list of things I’d like to marvel at. God okay yes. That was just on my mind okay. Alright.
(And then, to think, no matter how many times you commit each of those answers and findings to memory, another body entirely would leave you completely clueless and unsatisfied, hungry once again.)
tonight is just one of those nights i would take a nice bubble bath and then just prance around my own apartment in a towel for the rest of the night with classical music chatting with me and i could just stay up all night baking sweets and sweets and more sweets and dip my finger in all of the batters and watch tangled and peter pan and be wendy for the night because they are my favorites and have just one mikes lemonade because it tastes so nice and let my hair just lay against my shoulder in a wet braid and not mind the drips and not question my happiness and only pay attention to the rumbling in my tummy anticipating whats baking and warm knees and piles of quilts on my couch and cold weather and bare feet on wood floors and nothing else nothing else
I want to be in a bed piled with goosefeather (where you could not find me for days) with four faded brick walls surrounding me and the 55 degree night walking in through the window that I will leave open regardless of what others tell me and I want the chill to wrap around my ankles and kiss my knees and tease my thighs and I don’t want to hear a thing besides cars passing against sloshed and wet city streets and heels arm in arm and spoons clinking against coffee mugs and dogs lose on their fire escapes and I want to be read recipes and murmured stories and whispered those things soft enough to let me sleep and I want nothing other than that single window and that single draft and that single bed and that single voice and I just want to be home. When can I be home.
Every evening, as if you timed it precisely, the bathwater would begin to run and rumble quietly throughout the apartment. It became a sort of comforting buzz, a trill to call the sun to rest. Even with the door closed, the orange haze seemed to leak out from beneath to greet the rest of the apartment. Foot by foot I would hear your skin break surface against the water. I imagined it curving to your waist. Greedily cupping around your thighs. I would sneak myself in through the door, careful not to disrupt the tangerine glow heating through the sheet draped over the lone window. I’d sit at the tub’s side, resting my chin at the fold of my arm, and I’d watch. Suddenly you would take in a breath, and even the simple motion of your lungs disrupted the still lake, rippling off as it carried your voice through. “Tell me about them.” Clockwork. You asked of every body that accompanied my day’s walk. You asked of the people I’d passed, oh the people; where I thought they might be going, how many of them, if not all, had looked troubled. You wanted to know if they had touched home. Your lips would tuck in a wave of sadness if I spoke of anyone that had been alone. At any of those points, you would calmly interrupt, “I can’t imagine why.”, and your eyebrows would give a disgruntled furrow. At any time in which I mentioned your day, you would without pause proceed with a “Their lips?” You had always seemed to think the mere purse of lonesome lips could tell of more exhaustion than any other form of communication. To you, it was a fascinating, but agonizing and speechless tale. Nothing was more tragic to you than untouched lips (every night, your finger tip would trace my own). You consumed the hallows of everyone you’d ever met. You thought that, even with a brief and single returned gaze, you could carry their sorrows. You could cradle their darkest of nights and bring them to rest in the water, in the orange room. No one was ever to know of your own hours’ troubles. No one was to ever know of the woes that soaked alongside your frame.
Every night you looked forward to my sights. To meeting yet another person through mouth. Through lips alone. You reveled the tales of the city’s travelers, of their stories, their wordless beings. And I savored just as much the lingering, warm smell of bathwater on your skin.
I want someone to take me out for coffee. I want the rain outside to cling to my neck and I want to just sit across from one another and let hours drain and drain and drain and while we’re talking I want to just keep repeating your name just before everything I say just to make sure I’ve got it right and just to memorize how it rolls off of my tongue and you can tell me of how you fret when the streets fill with fall or how she let you go and let you suffer and then we can walk arm and arm and for once I’ll let my hair tangle across my eyes and nose and knot with dry air and let it be and for once I’ll acknowledge the gloom as it accompanies us and for once I’ll be okay with this weather and this sadness and this dreary day to weeks to months and we will part ways with a quiet kiss to my cheek and I will be able to silently and contentedly watch you leave and be calmed and comforted by the lonely bed that waits for me a few flights up.
And the sheets might still be warm with your legs, but I’d prefer the cold.
