Tag: Sex

Temple

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My thunder thighs don’t say temple.

My stretchmarks are not stones where monks kneel.

My bruises and scars are not made of stained glass.

My body isn’t a temple.

My body.

This body,

is capable of recovery and growth.

It meditates in the miracle of healing.

It’s not stagnant, not easily broken.

 

I don’t think they know what my body isn’t– only what it is.

And to them, it is a site of worship.

The focus and reverence on my skin,

wordless prayers on my lips–

I can tell I am church to this person.

That this is a pilgrimage they’ve made.

I don’t know all the lovers and deserts they’ve fasted through,

What seas of strangers they’ve parted to be here,

Right here,

Testifying at the center of me.

I don’t know what sermons they’re saying,

but I feel what they mean,

what they mean in this monotheistic moment.

This person makes me feel like this is the only god they could ever fathom praising.

 

I am not my own temple.

Any temple that’s suffered the wreckage I have would never survive.

But this can be a temple for someone else,

their sanctuary for visiting touch.

We become shelters for those who honor us enough to let them stay.

 

Warning Label

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I wasn’t built to be small

Or quiet

Or demure.

I was made with a blowtorch rather than a paintbrush,

And my tongue is more stiletto than taffy.

I am Fortissimo on a Tuesday,

and utterly deafening come Friday.

To love me is to dance with me as I am,

rather than trying so desperately to sweep me off my feet.

To love me is to understand that cutting me down to size is like taking a nail file to the Himalayas,

Arrogant that you can reduce something that only knows how to be vast.

There’s a lot of dull sandpaper in my wake.

So you,

potential suitor,

you with lantern eyes lit by my fire,

I can’t shrink for you.

I won’t try

because I know what I was made for.

Love works like this

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No one is ever yours.

You are not the keeper of a spirit,

nor the jailer of a soul.

You get to love people,

You have the divine privilege of adoring them.

In doing that,

Loving someone (anyone),

you love everyone who has ever loved that person.

Even when you don’t like their family, their friends, their colleagues,

When your eyes roll at family reunions and every work occasion is met with a groan,

you love everyone

who guided this person to you,

their affection fed your Paramore long enough to find you.

No one met you singlehandedly.

Everyone in this life has been cradled by others.  Our footsteps forward are signatures that we have been loved so much it propels us to other good things.

Friends and family and teachers and mentors–

each a votive

who lit the way and led them into your arms.

Ambiguous Friend

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Your eyes,

Like a lighthouse,

drew me to you.

I am, all too often,

adrift in self love as substitute.

I have sunken myself in pride before.

Your lantern eyes compelled me to shores I dared not touch.

 

A sailor expects paradise after a grueling journey.

I, a lover.

But ours is not a love with lips and hands and passion.

I resented the fire you shared with everyone but me,

Miserly with your affection,

Chills for all the things you said but never did.

 

So I left your coastline,

more willing to drown myself that call your name lifesaver.

I learned to swim,

let the water hug my body in all the ways you wouldn’t.

 

You are not paradise,

Nor the denouement of my hopes.

A lighthouse is not home.

And you aren’t the lover I once wanted you to be,

Rather, refuge, guidance, safety.

I see you

And exhale.

With profound love and gratitude,

I exhale.

 

 

Involuntary

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Even when I don’t want to–

when I want anything else but you,

Any name but yours–

I see my hands reaching for you.

My entire body is an arrow to yours.

Craving your terrain and the way my hands sink into it like teeth.

 

You are the falsest of norths,

A hometown I am ashamed to claim, and yet, refuse to leave,

A direction made entirely of memory.

I beg my heart to pick another rhythm.

Pick palpitations over this purgatory.

It refuses.

So

Here I am,

like so many times before,

ensnared in the desolate paths of you.

 

 

Intimate

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Under the plum blanket of night,

all my secrets crawled out of hiding.

The body count of lovers before him–

A sea of distant men, even up close–

Couldn’t touch me

like the words he and I shared.