Fighting the Impulse

Ten years ago, I would have laid clutching my pillow, a raw yearning in my heart, an acute awareness of the inevitability and permanence of desire unfulfilled. My thoughts would've turned to escape, to resolutions arrived at too quickly for cool reason to intercede.

I think I've grown a lot since, though. I've learned how quickly passions ebb and flow, of the heart's capacity to mend itself and readily clutch to new hopes, the foreknowledge that eventually (and always) the dust settles and life goes on. An exorcism that would've taken months now lasts just a few days.

But that initial moment, the mental 180 one has to make when denial slowly melts away (which, unfortunately, comes roaring back in unpredictable ways) and optimism and risk-taking fizzle to damage control and determined withdrawal...that will never, EVER be easy.  When the living present catches up to the imagined future and charges a deafening wallop to its jaw.

Suckle Sweet

Lipstick lover, pursed and shuttered,
Scent of salt and moist-filled utters,
Supple luster, pushed asunder.
Tickle sweet and coax a-flutter,
Lick the sap that spills from under,
Sticky slime of sugar plundered.
Feel my stubble, lips-a flutter.
Baby shakes with all that wonder.