He closed his eyes and tasted the layers of emotion that instantly filled him
Call & Response
/ / Somerville, Massachusetts
After their first time, laying wrapped up in his cloud, she warned him — “I’m going to drive you crazy.”
A few days later, as he asked her the questions that tore the sanity of her plans wide open, as she pummeled him with tears and laughter, phrases of anger weaved with terms of love, he leaned back against a pile of pillows and teased her back: “Not if I drive you nuts first.”
And now he’s writing her down, writing about her as if she were a character like so many he’d created, one of the fictional loves that he’d carved out of his thoughts – his Galatean girls – but the truth is that she’s got that way about her – sweet and sharp, unique, rough, lovely, bewitching, bewildering she does drive him quite insane sometimes.
And why? Because when he thinks he knows her, she proves him wrong, and when she yells, he can’t help but parry her thrust with his own cross words; and then when he sighs and decides to let it be, she is his lover, his love, and she reaches out with such softness to embrace him.
It’s a fiery love, sometimes perfect and simple, too much so, sometimes testing the edges of their patience. He doesn’t know why they keep tumbling, tired, collapsed, into a sleepy jumble after exhausting each other making love, making fire, making trouble. Their tug of war, using, abusing each other, yet it somehow leaves him feeling more alive, more enlightened; always in the moment in its dirty, scratched, and undimmed wonder.
Sometimes he wondered about a calmer love; but the truth is, he wanted this, always wanted this, as if a laughing god read his stories and his thoughts and created the one person who could at once both undo and inspire him.
And reading this, she rolled her eyes slightly – “You’re amazing,” she injected, “the things you say about me. But I don’t need more pride.”
He closed his eyes and tasted the layers of emotion that instantly filled him – curiousity, confusion, desire, impatience, joy. And he realized this was the texture of her skin.