If only I had pressed my lips together, paused to draw a breath,
to exhale this fervour as a surge, as the rush inspired by your mind and flesh,
I would be touched now by your hand, I would be caressed by something other than this regret.

I miss you.

And the way things used to be.

And the way we were together.

And the fire – our fire – that would threaten to annihilate us both, sparked by the simplest word, the briefest gaze, the smallest sigh, the mere brush of bodies and fingers and trembling lips.

And the instant I felt you, felt you inside me, felt you deep in my flesh and my bones, felt you and your gaze and your weight and your voice as new and unknown and yet just like home.

And that moment, that one perfect moment where time stood still and the distance between us contracted and you genuinely craved my warmth, my truth, where we laid each other bare, stripped away the fear, the hesitation, all pretence, where we confessed it all with intimacy and absolution, where we revealed like never before, where we merged with lust and sin and tenderness, where we stood on the precipice, on the brink of something real, something more.

And the freedom of this desire – this desire for you – the freedom to feel it, to speak it, to live it and breathe it, to fuck it, to kiss and touch and devour each other until we moan and clutch and scream and come, until our bodies tremble in exhausted bliss, until they silently beg again for the glistening heat, to fuck you, to fuck it and fuck it up so absolutely you will dress me in your angry silence and cold resentment and I will shed big hot furious tears, to fuck it up, to tear us apart, to piece the shreds back together again with passion, with lightness, with careful words softly spoken, with easy steps and a gentle caress, with gestures verging on affection, on love.

There was a time when you would seal your whispered confessions, the passionate words of your lust, your farewells and goodbyes with a kiss, with a cross, with a sweet little x.

But once it disappeared from sight, once that sweet little x ceased to be, I knew things had changed; I knew we would never be the same. I knew the hint of affection you cradled tentatively in your palm had been lost, had faded forever away.

The days, the weeks have faded away and yet the visions that rush past my eyes, the sensations that assault then course through my body take me back as if it was only yesterday.

So overwhelmed, so seized by this torrent, I can barely form an utterance with either lips or pen. And even in this rare moment when the words have chosen to grace me with their presence, I am at a loss; I am dumbstruck, unable to fix upon a point, a look, a stroke, a caress, a thrust, a soft swell, a detail, a beginning.

Where do I begin? Where do I begin?

Do I begin with that night, with the morning after, with the season and the oppressive heat that boiled mercury, blistered bitumen, melted bricks and mortar, with the heat that radiated through the day and long after the sunset, the heat that prickled my newly bathed and perfumed skin, my once fair flesh golden and gleaming as I impatiently waited for you to weave your way through the peak-hour traffic?

With your knock on my door, with the moment you crossed the threshold, with your grin, my smile, our momentary shyness, with our first kiss, deep, devouring, urgent, with the way our hungry lips and tongues immediately erased the miles that had kept us apart for an aeon, with the change in erotic tempo as I stopped to recover my sight, my reach, my breath, this gaze meeting yours, wandering tenderly over your face, these fingers sensually sliding up the curve of your neck, finding their home in your nape, my lips softly brushing the peaks of your mouth, this silken tongue tracing its shape, your hands possessing my hips, urging me into the pulsation of your thickening and hardening flesh?

With your fingers teasing the zip of my dress, the metal teeth groaning in synch with the dirty sax oozing out of the speakers, the straps somehow gliding off my shoulders of their own will and accord, with the aching slowness you edged the bodice over the pert breasts sheathed in diaphanous lace, your tips burning a trail on the ebony silk, on my shivering body, your hands drawing the fabric down, down, down over the taunt line of my belly, easing it over my rocking hips, over the filigree bound tight around me, past the lean, silky legs raised up stiletto high?

With my own hands teasing and tugging at your constricting clothing, with my naked breasts pressed into the smoothness of your chest, my lips gently suckling your nipple, your knees buckling violently in response, the lightest of kisses, the daintiest of licks finding the glistening pearl nestling in your cockhead, my body bowed in worship, in benediction, my wet mouth enveloping your glans as your hands travel the length of my spine, as your questing fingers prise apart the luscious curves at the end of my feminine line?

With the moment I break away, leaving you lonely and yearning again, walking the path to the bedroom glowing in the lamp light beyond, with the way I meet your gaze over my shoulder, with my lingering form in the doorway as I register your desiring expression, the catch of your breath, the groan from low in your throat, with my position in front of the mirrored wall as I stand waiting for you once more?

With the reflection of our naked bodies, the contrast of your scarlet shaft pressed into my creamy thigh, your arm about my waist, the gentle strength of your hand as you slip in one digit then two then more, as you finger me, as you finger my hot velvet cunt, as my own knees weaken, the wetness dripping, flowing, my sweetness cupped in your palm, the sweat on your brow, the lone bead gliding between my breasts, my head on your shoulder, my body given over, abandoned to your touch, my body intoxicated with pleasure, the first orgasm screaming up through my bones, my gasp, my moan, these lips begging, pleading to be taken, to be fucked, to have you, to have you fuck me, to have you inside me? 

With the hour, the minute, the second you finally, finally lay me down, spread me wide, cleave open the pouting lips of my cunt, your glans gleaming with the honey you will indulgently lap later that night, your shaft nudging then plunging to the hilt, to the hilt, to the clutching hilt, no warning, no ceremony only desire, desire, a desire quickly morphed into need, the need to fill me, to feel me, embracing and milking, devouring, devouring you, from the inside, from the inside, my back arching off the now sodden and rumpled cotton sheeting, these arms grasping for earth, your pounding thrusts delivering your force, your weight, your possession, your cock emerging slick and triumphant, your cock buried in so deep neither one of us can think or speak, your cock, your thrusts, my screams ringing into the summer night’s silence, your cock, your thrusts, my screams, your dominance, your passion, your command speaking with precision to my trembling submission?

Where do I begin? Is this where I begin? Do I begin with you? Or do I begin at another beginning?

Do I begin with him?

Do I begin with the other you, with the one, with the man who has haunted this woman, this desire, these pages for what feels like an age? Do I begin with the revelations that should be locked and hidden away?

Do I begin with the fact he invaded me long before you arrived, with the ache in my heart, with the longing in my flesh, with the pain inflicted by his silence and disappearance, the pain I selfishly needed you to comfort and erase?

Do I begin with his spectre, looming, lurking in the corner, the voyeur deliberately conjured to bare witness, to taste the sour bile rising up in his throat, to feel the raw desire and bitter jealousy twisting his guts in a knot as you experience and savour and take me in every way he has always wanted and more, as you slide into me with a groan, as you possess me like a beast, as the walls absorb the sound of your flesh slapping hard from behind, as your sweat pools in my back, your hands a vice on this flesh, fucking me with a passionate brutality that will surely drive him from my soul, from this room at long last?

Do I begin with my hands clasped over my mouth in fear of releasing his name, my lids shut tight, shrouding everything but the visions within me, wanting you, wanting him, wanting him to be you, each deep thrust a hope, each angry plunge an exorcism, a purging of guilt, of jealousy, of obsessive desire running oily-hot through these veins, each blinding high, each resting low, each shuddering orgasm somehow bringing me closer to you both?

Do I begin with your tenderness, the complexity of your caress, with our lovemaking deep in the dark dead of night, with the way my body opened itself to you as I thought of him, as I needed and imagined him beneath my slight form, with the way I straddled your thighs, my delicate fingers wound around his uncut cock, my cunt hovering, my hips descending, this intimate flesh engulfing your heat, taking you to the place where you rightly belong, our bodies distilled to shadows, to sensate silhouettes, my heart reduced to a beating, adoring ache, our sensual rhythm, our mutual pleasure, our sensual rhythm transporting me across the ether, across the air and the lands and the seas vast between us, our sensual rhythm finally delivering me to you and you to me? 

Do I begin with this deluge, with this confusion, with this seemingly incoherent muddle of words, with the salty tears, with the sobs now breaking as I sit here and type, as I sit here confessing it all?

Where do I begin? Where do I begin?

Where do I begin when so much of this feels like the end?

Even though we have never met, even though my kiss has never lingered upon your mouth, even though my fingers have never caressed your naked flesh, I greet the dawn aching for you, aching to find you, aching to press my body into yours, aching for the softness and the violence born of this passionate need, aching to give myself completely, to indulge you absolutely, to be the woman you long to hold, the woman whose complexities you will eagerly embrace, the light and shade, my push and pull, the urgency, impatience, the imperfections that have driven others away.

But more than this, I ache today for hope’s return, for the faith, for the belief that you are out there, somewhere, waiting for me.

Without you
Filling the space beside me
The secret ache inside me
There is nothing
Nothing
But the blue

I woke startled and frightened, with the room enveloped in darkness. I woke alone and afraid, my skin glowing with a chilling sheen. I woke with the vivid imagery of my dreaming flashing before me, playing in my head, its afterimages seared on my eyes. I woke with the phantoms, their menacing scowls and glistening blades stepping out of the shadows, their cruelty, coercion and horror following me through the night. I woke calling out his name, calling out your name, calling to you, my body calling out for you.

As I lay in bed, eyes on the white ceiling, ears listening to my shallow, recovering breath, hands registering the heartbeat thudding through my chest, I longed to be held and soothed by you, longed for the safety of your strong arms, the sweetness of your tender kiss, I longed for you to hush the gentle cries and drink away my salty tears.

The warmth
The warmth
In his voice
In his laughter
In his kind and generous soul

The heat
The heat
In his breath
In his stroke
In the words of his desire

The burn
The burn
In our speed
In our obsession
In our climax
In our conclusion

I wanted it all.

The possibility, the promise, the risk.
The pleasure, the pain, the complexity.
The body of strength, of weakness, of beauty exotic.
The sweet laughter, the scars, the luminous soul.
The fucking, the sex, the making of love.
The cuts, the bruises, the soothing hereafter.
The light-hearted banter, the debates deep and raging.
The words, the silence, the sound of him coming.
The man, the master, the lover, the whore.
The wordsmith, the artist, the poet.

I wanted it all.
I want it all still.

But it can no longer be.

And so the want is left achingly wanting.
Until it fades out of mind, out of body, out of sight.

The hour of their call meant she was somewhere between sleep and consciousness, defences low, mouth spilling forth the uncensored thoughts and sensations of body and mind.

In the warm rumpled bed with the phone cradled next to her ear, she revealed herself to him in the way she only could when immersed in the midnight dark as his voice and laughter and the intimate details of his life wove their way into her very core.

But now she worries she has bared too much, too much of herself, her insecurities, too much of the desire he ignites in her and the attachment she is beginning to feel after so short a time.

And so her stomach churns and head vertiginously spins as she wakes quietly weeping, fearful of the vulnerable openness he has inspired, fearful he no longer cares for the view from here.