Your kiss is cotton candy, so sweet and slick and sticky with the flavored sugar burst of the promise of satisfaction but the aftertaste of empty and lost with the artificial color of your last “I love you” spilled before you walked out, the night when I most needed you to fill me with something more substantial.

When was the last time I was nourished here, where we are supposed to be each other’s center and source of the joy of being alive and in love with the world and with each other for the longest time in our lives of beauty and celebration, but you haven’t felt the desire to offer me that sustenance in a long time.

Over and over, we melt and dissolve in the rain of our differences, pouring over us like the loss we’ve both experienced before, in other loves, in other likes, but now in this place of so long together, the years of us trying to be US and not just you and just me.

I want more than raspberry blue and cherry red, a party favor, just for show, so it’s time to step away from the web of spun fluff we’ve built around us and make something that satisfies this hunger I think we both have.

Dance of the Apps

We both know.
We knew in an instant,
but still we do the dance.
Out of habit
Out of fear
We both want the same thing
We already said it
In so many words.
In so many pictures.
In so many fantasies.

You want to be up.
I want to be down.
You want to be in.
I want to be around.
You want to lead.
I want to be led.
You want to give.
I want to receive.
What more is there to know?
Yet still we dance.

But neither will say “yes.”
Not yet.
What would it be?
How would it go?
What if it fails
And scarier,
What if it succeeds

The dance is over.
Opportunity has passed.
Uncertainty prevailed.
We look for other partners,
Hoping to find the one
Who brings it home

You stand. I kneel.
The perfect dance,
Where we don’t move,
Except those parts
Where you are in me.

Sometimes, we pause.
My breath stopped
By your urgency,
Which is always mine, too.
Your needs are my own.

The dance restarts. I inhale,
Capturing your scent
And we go back to our rhythm
Each moving to heighten
And deepen.

We take our time,
Ensuring the pleasure grows.
And the need becomes unbearable.
This is about the journey
And not the destination

The pace is yours
And then becomes mine
Your hands on my head,
My eyes on yours
Your breathing ragged.

As with all journeys,
There is a destination.
You arrive at yours
At the instant I reach mine.
Offering me your Gift.

What is holy, if not this dance,
The coupling of our hunger,
The passionate give and give,
The Sacrament you have given me
And the pleasure I have given you.

What is holy, if not this dance,
The temple between your thighs,
The place of service at your feet,
The Hardness that swells with need
And the silver thread from lip to tip

What is holy, if not this dance.
Filling our needs
Satisfying our desire.

This is when I worship
This is why I pray
This is what I need
This is how I heal
This is where I live.

Let’s swap some dark for some light. I’ll shotgun you fairy dust and pixie sticks. Breathe it in so I can see your eyes sparkle with it and we can dance on thrift store heels.

Let me lick some darkness off your fingers, sticky and bitter, like Turkish coffee, so I can taste your anger and feel your sadness on my lips.

Hear my over-caffeinated litany of excitements about you, as my mania comes to stay for a weekend. He’ll trash the house, raid the liquor cabinet, and burn the rug, but you can stay for the party, if you just hold my head over the throne, till the hangover passes.

Drop your tears on my shoulder and let them burn marks in my skin to remind me that I ache inside, as you do, but I won’t let go, till your shoulders stop shaking and your breathing settles to a rhythm we can sway to.

Let’s howl at our fears of all that could happen. That sound in the night, that movement in the dark – surely a harbinger of loss, a whimper or a growl, but possibly only a voice needing to say they love us that we’re too afraid to hear.

Let’s do shots of those moments of your pleasure, skin flushed with exertion and your throat dry with “oh God”. Get me drunk on your passion and I’ll join you in the toast till we have to catch our breath before ordering another round.

Flood me with the ocean of your uniqueness, your beautiful, your hidden, your ugly. You show me yours and I’ll show you mine. Let me surf the who-you-are and what-you-need and know you so intimately that I move with even your subtlest tides. I want it all.

And don’t worry. I won’t drown, because in you, I can swim.

I remember seeing you in that dress. I crossed the dance floor just to see if you could be that beautiful. It was one of those skirts from the 40s, where you can only walk high heel to toe. So out of place, and you so perfect in it. It fit your body like it was caressed onto you by a dozen admirers. And I wanted to be the one to caress it off, but not that night. No, I wanted to earn that pleasure. Days, weeks, even months of courting you, till that glint in your eye was my smile and your head turns just so, as you see me, across a room, just like this one.
Since you moved in, I have adored you, every day. I’ve seen myself in your eyes as my image fades. As the coolness of your touch matches the coolness of your heart. That dress hangs in the closet like a promise, like the past might come back again. But tonight you took it out and lay it on the bed. “I’m seeing some friends, tonight.” It still fit just as perfectly, and I wanted to be a dozen admirers.
I watched you go outside, and just around the corner I can see you wait at the bus stop, past the last schedule. I know you are waiting for him, But he isn’t coming for you. He told me, today. He’s coming to me, just as he did when you first wore that dress.

I loved to watch you from behind.
A work of art.
But not in the leaving
Without a word,
Not even goodbye.
A habit of yours
That always broke me.
Cruel punishment
for an unnamed crime.
The silence echoed.
Your absence returned.
The emptiness repeated itself,
Seemingly forever.
The hollow feeling
Becoming identity.
I was never complete
without you.
But then I found others
Who showed me something
I should have known,
But had to learn,
Despite you.
They gave me the gift
of not being you.
A lesson of love.
That I am not a void to be filled,
but a space to be held

Remember that Apple? The one in the story? It’s not what you think it is. Some stories say that it was from the Tree of Knowledge, but that was the greatest deception of all. It was from the Tree of Belief. The sin of man was not to know more, but to abandon faith and believe that we know more. To be certain. It is to turn away from God, and believe our own truths. It’s why we make unjustifiable rules, and write Books, and start wars, and demonize others, and pull triggers, and to not take responsibility that we were there pulling the trigger, too. We made it seem like it was “God’s Will”. We believe hard, because that original sin still controls us. We believe that our religion is superior, that homosexuality is a sin, that others are dangerous, that women are inferior, that the Bible is true, that we should be in control, that violence is an answer, that guns keep us safe, that might makes right, that anyone deserves to die, that we are the chosen, that Creation is to posses, that power comes from oppressing, that life is a zero sum game. Today, it is hard for me to have faith that we can move past this original sin. Instead, we are sinking deeper into it, with avarice and cruelty.Do you want to meet God, or see the face of Christ? Then put your Book away. Don’t hide behind it. Live among people who are different or hate you or you’re afraid of. Feed them, anyway. Give them health care, anyway. Listen to their sadness, anyway. Welcome them to your home, anyway. Reach out and defend them anyway, Accept their inheritance as children of Creation, anyway. Pray for and with them, anyway. Think this is not what God calls us to do? Do you believe it’s about following laws and rules and Books? Then maybe there’s a piece of apple stuck in your throat.