Posts tagged with "women"

A Bittersweet Indulgence

Our bod­ies burn like flames in an oven, so we kick off the cov­ers. I slip my arm around her waist and press her body close to mine. She holds my hand to her chest, fin­gers wrapped around fin­gers, legs wrapped around legs.

The morn­ing light comes in blue and soft and sub­tle through the win­dow, and the stars begin to fade.

I want to hold her like this under a tree in the sum­mer and pass the time in her com­pa­ny, alive to every moment we’re togeth­er. I want to hold her like this when the cars and streets are buried under snow out­side, so we may tru­ly know what it is to be warm and com­fort­able. I want to run my fin­ger along the soft­ness of her face, so I may learn every land­mark and fea­ture, and nev­er for­get. I want to read to her my favourite books on lazy Sunday after­noons, so I can take her to where they’ve tak­en me. I want to feel her breath against my skin, the breath that gives her life, and me joy. I want to wake up to find she’s not away in anoth­er bed, but next to me, lost in slum­ber, for there can be no oth­er such sim­ple hap­pi­ness.

This is where I’m per­fect­ly con­tent, lost in a moment when time has stopped and noth­ing else mat­ters.

But I know it won’t last for­ev­er. She’ll soon be gone. I won’t be the one to do these things with her, the one to love her the way she was meant to be loved, the one to love her as deeply as she deserves. There’s no use in think­ing about it now.

I’ve fall­en for this muse in my arms, totale­ment, ten­drement, trag­ique­ment.

The one who inspires me to cre­ate won­der­ful things, to make beau­ty as I see it in her, so that oth­ers may share in this feel­ing. If I had a mil­lion words to describe her grace, it still would­n’t be enough.

I could be sad, but I’d rather be hap­py instead.

So as the sun begins to rise, I indulge myself a lit­tle longer, and hold her clos­er before drift­ing off to sleep.

I Found Her

The woman I’ve been look­ing for my entire life.

Her name was Christine. She was thin lipped. Frail limbed. Not the least bit cam­era shy, as she pulled her shirt up to expose a breast, like she had fall­en on the grass this way and the folds in her clothes rearranged them­selves on her body.

Here she is on a horse in the night. Here she is, grim-faced, cradling her son. There was a scar on her neck from a sui­cide attempt years ear­li­er, and through a series of pho­tographs, you could see the scar heal.

For sev­en years she was mar­ried, before she suc­cess­ful­ly jumped to her death from the 9th floor of an apart­ment in East Berlin.

A blink in my eye, a snap of some­one else’s shut­ter. A muse of flesh and blood. The Jane Birkin to Serge Gainsbourg. The Olga Ivinskaya to Boris Pasternak.

This is some­one who under­stood his art, his mor­bid­i­ty, his need to cap­ture her sui­cide in a frame, then pub­lish the image of her body on the pave­ment, look­ing down from the 9th floor, along with insou­ciant pic­tures of a teacup, a play­ground, a tank, three plants.

And as soon as I had found her, she’s gone.

Should I be hap­py that she exist­ed? Should I be sad that she’s gone? Should I be pun­ished for com­par­ing the women I’ve had to her?

Is this painful, or beau­ti­ful, or both?

The Spot

If a woman sleeps alone, it puts a shame on all men. God has a very big heart but there is one sin he will not for­give: if a woman calls a man to her bed and he will not go.

—Zorba the Greek

There exists a spot on every woman that needs to be kissed.

It can be as innocu­ous as the curl of the lip, the web of the hand, or a mark on a land­scape of skin.

It’s the respon­si­bil­i­ty of a man to find this spot. Not as a ser­vice to the woman — some­times she isn’t even aware of such a spot — but as a ser­vice to the cre­ator of such things.

Portraits of Tiana

Tiana smiles

If you gave me the hypo­thet­i­cal option of pho­tograph­ing any­one I want­ed, I’d ask if it could be some­one who had already passed away. If so, I’d choose a Byronic hero like Mikhail Lermontov, or anoth­er one of the 19th cen­tu­ry Russian Romantics, or even Lord Byron him­self.

If I could choose some­one liv­ing though, I’d choose Tiana.

Continue read­ing “Portraits of Tiana”…