Piece from last Beat Night

ADULT CONTENT POETRY.

Velvet Red Calligraphy

I’d been avoiding arranging my stuff in the new place
Because I’d been afraid of finding more reminders

And I’d been screaming

In public

Alone

From sleep Too often.

But I was checking the content of a drawer for an inhaler for all the dust I’d kicked up

And I found an erotic letter written in velvet red calligraphy, and I almost fell apart, but my pieces are never together anymore with you away, so there was no further to fall.

I remembered…

Should I ever fuck anyone else (something I’m currently unable to imagine) they will be compared to the ease, and perfection of us, the mesh of flesh, fantasy and deed.

“Made for each other” used to be an empty’ phrase…

You said, before splitting, that sex was all we had, and I can’t really argue.

I just don’t think you understand why…

Do you remember those nights,

(The last of which happened in late spring, though I’m sure you’d prefer to believe it much less recent), I don’t just mean sex because that didn’t stop till we moved apart, but

those nights with a

little bit of sex

before

a little bit of sleep

Before…?

Those nights when, already naked bodily we’d drop the games, and fronts, and manipulations we clothed ourselves in and were just us?

You thought I’d wake up ready like a teenage boy, and just take advantage

Because we’re like that and I could

And you like it so I should

But that’s not all of it…

I’d look at you, marveling, at the beauty of your unburdened face, and the skin as dear to me as my own,

And I had to be part of you, to become something more than me, because at those moments I could remember clearly the belief in forever, and in love, and in us,

And I’d use my body to try and touch your soul,

So I’d fuck you from sleep and

you’d wake to me in you

And my hands pulling you tighter, roaming as though touch-memorizing every inch, pulling hips into me, holding breasts for kissing, cradling your head as a treasure I never believed I’d earned,

You’d call my name breathlessly in a voice as sweet, and girlish as when we were kids

And those nights it was the song of my soul you sang,

And sometimes you’d say

I love you

As you came

And I’d say it as I collapsed,

But the last of these nights,

With my eyes in yours,

hands cradling your face

As pulses

And bodies

Pounded to the coming

burst

Eyes wide open, heart wide open I said first

I love you wife

And we burst,

And you whispered back

I love you

And your voice had tears on it, so I kissed them from eyes and words and face

And slept with my wife in my arms, and woke a whole man for one of the last times.

That’s why it was all we had: no other time were we just us, souls unshielded,

agendas,

and fears crumpled by the bed.

For all the awful things we did or said by daylight I knew how I felt on those nights.

“I love you, wife.”

That was reality, and all we had were those nights.

Chris Walters 9-11-10

Acknowledgments: I read this at last Beat Night. I had encouragement before the fact from CE, Shauna M-B, and HL that the piece was good. It tore me to bits to write and think about; I needed reassurance that it was good enough to share or I wouldn't have. 

On the night the wait to actually take the mic I was once master of was agonizing, knowing that I would be totally vulnerable in front of the room, as though as naked as in the piece. The reception it received was nothing short of extraordinary.

I'd not felt good in weeks, and waited in fear and twitching for my turn. I received messages throughout from she who lived the poem with me, but as she text-tore the stitches from my heart, someone else put lean arms around me, and whispered "I think you're wonderful", and started me feeling something other than pain for the first time since it all began.

She shored up my belief and resolve to risk it, and made me feel worthy, and as beautiful as she.

I wouldn't have even brought that piece, and definitely would not have performed it if not for her.

Thanks, H. I heart ya. A lot.