When I wrote this piece it was for a creative writing class I was taking while going to nursing school. It took me several rewrites, when it was finished I was quite pleased with it. I only got a B grade, as my sentence structure was very fragmented. i have more red on that paper then Victoria Secret has red panties. My instructor did add however that the fragmented sentences added charm and character to the prose.
I wrote it as a letter to my husband as he and I were going through a very rough patch. I saved it for the perfect moment left it on his desk so that he could read it alone and when he was ready. I have to tell you that the making up after his read was spiritual. This is a very personal love letter and an apology. I hope you all enjoy the read. It is rather lenghty, but as far as I am concerned worth it.
My Handsome Prince,
Picture yourself on a boat. On a river, naked for your lover. Strong as Thor posing before his bath, you hover, no, float over the water, and yet drift among the reeds and lilies. Does the lover sigh over your handsomeness? Or is it merely the strain of bared muscles above the churning oars. Stroke. Stroke, stroke, along with the tiny glowing wake of them, froths in the river water.
Did I say naked? I lied. Around the neck, Mark, wear a velvet rib band. Pale as blushing flesh and tinted with, is it dusk or dawn? No matter. A peach of soft and silken nap, threads of nerve in the ripening pulses, the color of lover’s nipples.
The sun is nearly glaring; yet lost among the deep fronds along the silhouetting vista of the river’s flow. Is it any wonder, my Love, that the movement brings to mind that of love making? You know how deep my great and abiding affection is, no, I say it, love for you. Still. What can fantasy and imagination say to passion, I ask of you to answer.
Picture it, Mark. Every moment. Picture a cathedral in natural beauty. Living nature. What can a woman, like I, do but plunge in. Explore. Try to, my sweet Prince, so that you may understand.
In each woman there lies, like some perfect statue in a marble block from Beauty’s quarry. Goddess. Harlot. Sorceress. Bitch. Venus of love, the temptress no man can resist. Tell me, of whom should I ask forgiveness? Woman is a world. And I, a daring one, explore that often-unknown world, amid the fleeing shadow and the blinding passion. And I, a thinking woman, have learned there. And I, a sensual woman, have made love there. Of whom must I beg forgiveness, my Love?
What is the longing of the soft caress? Of the deep and hungry tastes of lover which lover gives, hour upon hour. Do I not give you, my Love, years? What is a jealousy of the joining of passion and beauty, beneath the straining moans, the sliding stroke of cock, the swollen smile of lips? Then, what of desire?
Tell me you do not remember, Lover, that ecstasy between us? Is it not unique? Inviolate? Honorable. Not yet filled with touch but with wanting, with heart-deep struggles, for both lovers. And yet, I have been denied the familiarity of your body. Have you no memory? Was it only dreams, Love; you throwing back your head and crying my name as inhibitions where abandoned? What conquest is your body, when our minds have writhed in passion, have driven out light and darkness in selves and experienced the, what is its name,…Mark,…what word? Can you define lovers better? Into that nameless thing. Together. Sometimes so passionately that constellations form, in new and lusty shinning in the dusking sky. Did you think that was a lie, My Precious Friend? To see the stars?
I’ve heard your many voices, my darling. The songs of your heart that cut my soul; your laughter, like that of a child. Your silences have schooled me in...In feeling of you. I can feel you when you breathe. But there is no originality in me, my Love. I am neither poet nor revealer of the deep-hearted tale. My articulation is in touch, is it not? You must know by now. No lover is blinded nor deaf, nor yet, insensitive. That’s what we learned, did we not?
Is it the scrawl on linen paper that cries, "Take me!”? Or the near silent whisper in the night of shadows? What cuts, me deepest are your small vanishings. The goings. Wordless. Shy. Bared and baring your lover. This Lover stumbles. She does.
And yet, you of all, know how graceful a lover I am, do you not? Not through ego, I say this to you; you understand that, I know. But. Is it not so? I have always been a dancer. Music glides into my blood. Well, we both know the twining of lovers in music’s deepest and richest throes. It is. Animal. Paradisaical. Beyond articulation of word, but the ballet of touch, of taste, of kiss, of sucking in, of taking again and again. That, Mark is how we have known it.
Have you seen me, I wonder, from my own eyes? I have seen me through yours. Your tenderness, gentle persistent persuasions, forgiveness of my inadequacies tenting our faces, or was it moonlight flitting through the softly moving strains, and painting my face with your shadow as your lips tasted mine. I saw me in yours then. For an instant only. You do understand, my prince? Tell me that much at least.
Understand the seduction of Sirens. Understand the passionate heedless flinging of man and woman together. Flamenco of desire, danced in faster steps, more bold caresses. Have I immunity? I cannot bolster my fortress with the mere, the mundane, no, I say it is noble, the bastion of poetry. Verses scribbled and sprawled dredged up like foam on the lips of a maddened, denied lover. Lifeless, sunless, graveyard, and is death, Mark, that is my heart without desire.
But how to describe the lover’s touch? I know no words for it, Lover mine. Divine? No. It simply is. Does the hunger die because the appetite is a bit starved? No, Mark. I do not accept that. Oh, well, Lover, of course, you will swiftly say Stop! Oh, yes, I know. The deep, the ethereal, the impossibility of love, you will show me. Worn like a drying bloom in a locket that chains you in a past. Who does not wear them? And then some. Shall I name her to you? Bound down like Morley’s ghost, link upon link of hearts forged tightly and here and there among the chains, a strongbox containing priceless shards, of shattered hearts, of ruined dreams. It makes me strong to bear such a weight, my Love. And still be a dancer, I mean.
The whirling touch of hand in hand; the brush of thighs: feels good. My Heart, you know it does. Yet because of a passion. Because of a hunger fed. Because I made love with you and let stones fall from my heart. Because of this, because of this… my heart cries in abandonment. That is of a certain cruelty. Byronic. Exiling. Beneath the nobility of your heart, as I have known it. Our often-blinding passion each for each other…. And the stuttering, here and there will-o-the-wisp rhythm, like the humming glow of fireflies in our own dark places. Our laughter. Our friendship. Our. How precious an "our" is.
I would to touch you, to take us both and let the slow fires flame. Fingers becoming feathers on blushing skin. The upward flight of nipples like doves seeking more sky. The yearning of cock and the sweet vase of woman holding the rose’s stem to blossom in sighs and silences. Put away what is not there and not asked for in some magician’s box. I surrender; it is true, on a boat, on a river. Lover naked and proud and I open as the water lily. Kissing breasts and laughing like ripples from the boat. Lifting my hand to take his cock as those lips that I dream of and long for find mine. It was not the heat of the day; it was not the lulling sway of the boat, but sharing and melding with one that I adore, the tasting and swirling kisses, the taking and giving of the dance.
Yet I am here. Writing to you, My Prince. I ask not forgiveness, but understanding. I am that woman, no more, but no less. Four more years could but pass, and the last stone fallen away from my heart, and still not to have touched your smile, you will find me open like that water lily.
