February 3rd, 2014


It is thrilling to wear patterned tights with leather, and over the tights but under the boots, knitted wool knee socks that have kept you warm this winter. The subtle sexuality of your calf rising from the boot, like the curve of your hip rippling the dress you wear, is satisfying to your five-year-old self who knew, just knew, this is what it meant to be a woman, but terrifying to your sterile and cloistered 29-year-old-almost-thirty self who wants nothing to do with the sex you carry. Oh that is a lie. It is the thing you're best at, and you have lost a great deal by avoiding it. Lost and gained. Lost and gained. Like your body, like the tide, like the moon, and how close you are to these cycles. And doesn't that make you grit your teeth and want to cut off all your hair? But you did. You already did. There are no more frontiers, no more bold acts of nunnery. You will meet a man soon. He will have a jaw line you like to look at against the light when he isn't looking, and that you especially like the look of in the pictures in which he is kissing your unreasonable lips. It's the lower lip I love someone once said to you, to which you thought, but didn't say, bullshit. You and every man knows the top one is the one you imagine when you imagine me on my knees. The time you've spent on your knees recently has redefined intimacy. Something has been put back. You blush again, when eyes turn your way.