Intrinsic Renditions

Marooned

I hated the way that it got cold at night. The way that the chill rose up from the lake and blew through the tiny cracks of our cabin, inching its way to the space between us, that tiny river of bed sheet. A gap so evident it might as well have been a chasm. 

I’ve often wondered if I should have told you of the way I used to stay awake at night, searching your face for the tiny creases left in its corners, the remnants of your crooked smile or the purse of your lips. 

I miss the way that we became an island when I was in your arms. That we were the shore that the sea would lap against, resolute and unchanging. 

The words I kept collected in my chest, those small treasures that you longed to cherish, would they have made any difference at all? 

They are still there, those treasures, but they are no longer sought after. And I fear that they are buried so deep that they will never belong to anyone. 

Sometimes I drive just to feel like I’m moving.

Tempest

There are times when I am lost in imagining the softness of your skin

and the way it would feel beneath my fingers;

how I would feel in claiming it: my own.

Would that I could write out the ways in which I would love you softly, 

but such sentiments are saved for better men than I this night. 

There is a tempest in my chest, 

a wild brewing of blood coursing my veins.

I am diminished,

its baying wolf. 

I am only for the weight of you above me, 

bearing down in force and necessity,

an urgency of maneuvering that is reserved for the pressing of flesh. 

I am for your warmth

around and about me, 

so much so that what was yours becomes ours;

the tepid night receding in the wake of our raging. 

I would long for your delicate words

were it not essential that I hear that secret need escape your mouth

echoing above us,

a reminder of the ways in which

we need to have and be had. 

There is little else to say,

save:

this storm rages.

‘The human face is, after all, nothing more nor less than a mask.’

-

Agatha Christie, Sad Cypress

Stephen

… I watched her slip out of her clothes and crawl catlike across the bed. Her black bra and panties, my favourite pair, resilient against each pivot and twist. I stripped to my briefs and joined her on the bed, waiting for the scene to shift, for the inner mistress to come alive. Instead, she just curled into me, resting against my chest, the soft tuft of her hair just under my chin. Something ignited in me then. There was a moment, and I remember it distinctly, when the wet of her lips found my skin and I knew that I was changed forever. The elastic of my being was stretched, taut across my chest as though it would snap at any moment. The intensity was pacified in having her, in holding her and I wondered if this is what people talk about. If this fire, this immense urgency of being was what people thought of as ‘love’. I’d never had this before, not with anyone. I’d never felt such a keen sense of necessity; there was no other way to describe it. 

I listened to the quiet rhythm of her breathing, feeling it tickle against me and I realised that I had no other cares or desires that could wrest me from her. This had to be it. I was, for the first time, the only time, in love. 

Almost in spite of this revelation, I thought of Audrey. Had she felt this for me? It seemed cruel and unjust that one was capable of loving in the face of another who is nothing but profoundly disaffected. People should be like magnets, drawn to compatible bodies in which a current can flow, and bonding is lasting and successful. There are so many failed attempts, so much time wasted. It would be easier if there was a barrier, an invisible shield dispelling all negative ions. Everything is so flawed. . .