The First Time

The hours flow silently like running water into my enticing night.

I lie embedded hard and fast like fastened cuffs, to a bed from where you have locked me, to hold me still. Your fingers are so strong, they have twisted my shoulder blades into a demented perfection.

To keep me quiet, you cover my mouth with your hand and stare closely down into my eyes. Your hand feels like iron and your stare resembles a bullet-filled gun.

I worry that you may smash my teardops though perhaps, you are too kind for that. I take no risk. I sigh and stop struggling. I surrender very quietly and without moving. I am a newborn bride and still blindfolded in my cot of lacey white. I am a cub looking for cover. I am the virginal cup of anticipation and waiting.

All the time, my eyes move along with yours, never once leaving your face. We see what we see. We touch what we can. I stare with a mixture of trepidation and excitement. I try to smile a little nervously, then give up.

You don’t seem to mind, engrossed wholeheartedly in what you feel you have to do. My husband.  My husband.  This strange, regal king. But that’s the way you are all the time in your silence and your fortitude.

For survival, I struggle to drown in an ocean of a silent esctasy from where I have coloured its seadbed with lipsticks for corals and my eager girlish shame for seaweed.

Your wedding ring to me is the secret treasure chest from where past shipwrecks have toppled into the wells of my heart.

Now, I swim inside of myself; straight up and down and roundabout. I thrust my tail and fan the possibilities like a goldfish looking anxiously for a new love.

I taste the texture of your skin again and again with the unexpected melody of my lips from where your kisses have made an orchestral song for me all night.

I look for new continents as I float about on your body, dressed in nothing but a skimpy raft. I pray for no siren and wave no flag. If I could light a match, it would be for a mountain of desire to engulf me in its rescue and nothing more. Passion alight!

Otherwise, let this hour go on with its thunderous erratic emotions. For a moment, I close my eyes to the heat and the damp. I am basked in sweat.

Flesh buried in flesh. Fold encircling fold. I remember the eternal smell of your quick heavy breaths, the slow warm unfolding of your unexpected smile.

I want to keep soaking myself in this strange new aura of bliss. My breasts! My breasts are nowhere to be found. They have long fled with their swing of nipples and all. Beddy-byes and all that and a sweet goodnight! I am once more a girl as virginal as an imp. I am the mindless urchin…naked, hungry for more and feeling suddenly cold. I am a plank of wood, colourless and straight on my bent back. Will you let me go? Please…won’t you untie my wrists? Metaphorically speaking. Of course, of course. It’s nice to imagine you, the dark silent one. Or will you perhaps hold me instead, at the tender loins of your tight-fisted mercy?

This morning, on a crowded pavement, I have to close my eyes and pretend.
I am the wilted flower from yesterday with petals not yet dead and begging for more. I am the eager bride, still unashamed of her passion and blushing up a rose.

I am so turned on by my brand-new husband, I cannot walk in a straight line.