Kiss me...14:54 Jun 14 2005
Times Read: 621
You have come home with this dejected expression in your eyes. It happens so often lately: you wander up the path to the house, hesitate for a heartbeat or two by the door, as though bracing yourself - for what? Facing me? - before the key grinds in the lock and you come in, with cautious steps, gauging the situation, sniffing the mood.
Some weeks ago, you quit cutting your hair for a reason I cannot fathom, and it is growing fast. I love your hair. It is wild and soft, like you, something that is impossible to tame. You have let it go ugly and greasy and then, in one of those hefty mood swings of yours, begun to groom it carefully again. I would like to believe you do this for me.
When I pop my head round the corner of our messy little study, you already have your smile in place, brilliant and shiny and a little too wide, saying “Hi there, had a good day?”
My days are usually quite good, filled to bursting with work, and although it gets a bit much sometimes, it feels good to be useful. You hug me, and I can feel your embrace clinging a little, loosening with the tiniest hint of reluctance, but you are still smiling brightly, even manage to keep the spark in your eyes. I love your eyes, I could get lost in them - they have the colour of a dusky summer sky, and they allow me to look beyond all the masks you have.
You feel so warm, filled with so much longing, it always makes me tingle. I do not burn that easily, but with you I cannot help it. Your hands roaming over me, your lips on mine, so soft and eager, or aggressive, tongue dipping into my mouth deeply, and I know you had a bad day and are angry, frustrated, lost.
You are good at being lost, good at falling deeply, while still trying to cheer me up. I wish I were better at doing the same for you. Am I giving enough? I do my best to sort out all the little everyday things that make up the patchwork of our life. You still fidget. I’m missing something and I cannot figure out what. Why can you not tell me? I find it difficult to ask.
Kiss me, warm me - it is cold with you turning away from me, leaving me to remember how you used to touch and love me, glowing with want, unrestrained, glorious passion, your flesh melting into mine with searing heat. I long for the sensation of fullness, completion in body and mind you gave me when you were happy.
No, you tell me, you are not hungry right now, just tired, and you sound snappy and cool, but I can see the wounded smile, the soreness of your eyes, and how pale you are. Your work pays well, you say, but you cannot see the point, and it becomes difficult to keep up appearances. You are a bad liar, and keeping things from me makes you ill. That is something I love about you, but now it is a double edged sword that cuts me as well. What have I done to cool your passion? You are good at hiding and running, and sometimes I lie sleepless, listening to the clicking of the computer keyboard when you spend nights working or surfing the web for company, and I wonder whether you will run from me next.
Has this life grown too tame for you? Has it dulled the lustre of our love enough for you to tire of me? I am not good at talking, and I do not know what you need now - when you came to me all those years ago, you were so broken, I wondered whether you would ever mend. Thought we had done it, healed you, only to find that the cracks are still there and you are coming apart at the seams and I can but watch, helpless, carrying on as usual for that is the only thing I know how to do.
You are kissing me, but it is only a brief brushing of cool lips against my cheek, your glance averted, ashamed, perhaps because this kiss is a lie. When I try to lean into you, you twist away, mumbling about some work you have brought home, and your smile is heavy with guilt. You are drinking too much, eating too little, neglecting your appearance.
It was better for a few days when we went away on holiday. We got drunk, made love, you inside me, and we were too far gone to reach completion. We were laughing about it and it went better the night after that. I wanted to believe we were back to normal. You kissed and used your teeth a little, just enough to entice - you were always good at making love in a way that left me gasping and longing for more, for you to plunge into me, soul-deep, endless, pushing me over the edge in a mindless blaze, and I tried to match your fire though I never quite managed. It would be like trying to outburn a furnace.
I must have missed something. Perhaps the hard gleam in your eyes that signalled the end of something I cannot understand. I recognise the want to hurt when I see it, and there it was, in your beautiful eyes, in the tight little sneer that sat in the corners of your mouth as you climbed over me, in the grinding of your slightly bared teeth, set firmly as though you were fighting the urge to sink them into my flesh.
I can take pain, but I am not good at it. I suffer, I fret, it scares me now that the wars we served in are over, and coming from you, the pain hurts more than just my body. The night I saw this gleam, I refused you, and we have not been the same since.
Please kiss me. I do not dare touching you much these days, we do not hold hands any more, we walk side by side like strangers when we are outside the house. I think I could live on without you, alone again and less troubled perhaps, but I do not want to find out. Do you feel betrayed, do you need my total surrender? I cannot cross this line. I feel demeaned, forced, and you tell me you feel used, that you gave and have nothing left. You are determined now to outwait me.
The fire that was between us is cooling down fast but I do not want this. I want you to love me the way you did, to kiss your way down my chest and my stomach until I am breathless and senseless and aching, and then take me, smother me, drive me crazy with hard, smooth, lustful motion, allowing me to see your flesh naked and heated and your very soul bare, and offering to me.
If only I were not so tired. I dream, but my body does not miss much. It rests contentedly, and I am feeling so old when I look at your face that is still youthful, though bitterness has marred it, along with disappointment and exhaustion. I cannot wake myself up; I need you, and you are stubbornly waiting while I only need one kiss from you.
Just one. Please.
Kiss me.
And all will be well again.
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