She’s here. I can feel her. I can smell her. The musky earth smell that is just like my own coupled with the sweet residual from the conditioner she uses. When I breathe in it is her I can taste, pushing roughly to the back of my throat invading my lungs and intoxicating my brain.
Her skin is salty like the sea, and there is no other taste like it. If I were to go to the town where she was born, lap at the waves, let them soak through my clothes and onto my flesh, I would not find the sensation I crave; the ache when my tongue touches the salted flesh rippled across her spine and my head rests between her shoulder blades.
Walking through town I can feel her, watch the world through her eyes, reach out in search of her hand next to mine. These games bring us closer when we are apart. I can trace her taste in the seawater, feel her laughter echoed on the air, but she is no-where to be found. Like the Madonna carried in the eyes and hearts of all children she is carried within me when we are apart.
She is all I could ask for, beautiful and devoted, powerful yet caring. She constantly tantalises my every sense I open my pores to be closer to the air she graces. I would turn myself inside out for her, I would offer up soul to watch her dance, and she dances like a whore.
Her body is marked for me, that is, I am the only one who has access to these markings. They were there when I arrived, lodged in the nape of her neck fresh from a man in a parlour located in the worst part of town. He may have printed the pattern, but I am the one who nurtures it each night, tracing my fingers across the obscure tribal scarring, my own private viewing of this art that is her body.
***
Sometimes at night she curls toward me and I drape across her, my body is just an extension of her own, I am hers wholly and she says if her body is beautiful then I am an accessory to that beauty. Without her at night I fear I might fade away, my body drifting into the white sheets, my red hair taking root against the bed head and becoming nothing more than another knot in the wood.
I do not want my bed to become a blank canvas again, without you there is no picture worth painting, no story to tell. At night the sheets are soaked with memory and promises of the future, you and I, together from the first night to tonight we consume the bed with tales of us.
Sleep with me? That is what I did; it is far more trusting to fall asleep in someone’s arms than to rent your body to them for an emotional fee. We could each have fucked anyone, but we chose to sleep together. I rested my head on your chest, weary from the previous night’s meeting; I fell in trust, in love, in sleep.
The strangest part of losing a lover is sleeping alone; the bed that once held so much passion is now cold. You awake alone and reach for the cold space where someone should be. Calling out a name you realise it is your own. It is not only love that has left; it is company. You yourself told me this, like so many things you have told me, I had come to the same conclusion. We were not ending but beginning and learning to become close again after both being alone.
***
Some nights she curls away from me, and just as before I become an extension of her body, fitting behind her, sealed like a shell and a sea creature, I hope I never become too small for her, that she never crawls out from inside of me, searching for a bigger heart, a bigger home.
My heart is big enough to drown any pain inside it, it is wide enough to contain all my hopes, desires and dreams and still have room enough for you to be the only creature inside. No, you shall not outgrow me; I shall not betray myself through time.
We will weather like all creatures, grow old, adapt and change, not to change would mean not to live, but we will change together, knotting around each other like saplings in my grandmother’s garden; sweet peas entwined and trailing across the walls, spreading our dreams out before us.
So it is on a night like this my head on your chest and your warm hands resting on my soft belly I can breathe in your scent, feel you next to me when you turn and I curl against your back, still in the dance that is sleep. I crook my neck, fitting my frame against yours, I fall back into sleep with the knowledge I love you and believe I always will.