to love without attachment
an evening thunderstorm with its torrents and brevity. she calls her lover to the window. she remembers suddenly, then, the beautiful illusion of his body, in which she rejoices. the passing illusion of rain. the purpose of my love is to devour me, she says.
she delights in their frailties and singularities, the idiosyncratic proofs of their transience. the noticing of unintentional gestures, she thinks, is the greatest blessing of intimacy. how, when she talks, her hands become small and cupped, as if offering seeds to tiny birds. how his eyes are boyish even while his brow is furrowed. how, after love, she turns on her side to face him, beads of sweat tracing the heavy undersides of her breasts. how he holds the glass of water to her lips, and she drinks. the erotics of offer and consent.
we can no longer name what binds us. the decay of memory makes partnership at once stiflingly familiar and shockingly alien. our knowledge becomes vague and ritual, the way great joys and great sorrows require memorial and public ceremony. in some moments, we love each other only viscerally, without reason. how great joys and great sorrows share the same intolerable breathlessness and must fade; how they are, in the end, indistinguishable.
the story of love must be written on the body, to avoid the terror of forgetting. lovers like the myth-writers of the ancients, as desperate and driven by passion. the vulnerable imprint of a fingernail. the lazy bitemark of satiety, of exhaustion. symbolic signposts of a dissolved boundary.
the thunderstorm neither tempers nor releases the interminable low heat of dusk. we expose, consume each other. the small hot tip of her tongue tracing the corner of his eye where tears collect. his thumb pressing the fullness of her lips, her lips with the softness of fruit, ripened like fruit with latent sun, and, like fruit, delicately opened. she removes her wedding ring and bites it between her teeth. the sharp, electric taste of metal, the sting of its flavor. desire blooms in her body.
he holds the glass of water to her lips, and she drinks. the vessel shatters.
outside, the twilight thunder.
.
.
she delights in their frailties and singularities, the idiosyncratic proofs of their transience. the noticing of unintentional gestures, she thinks, is the greatest blessing of intimacy. how, when she talks, her hands become small and cupped, as if offering seeds to tiny birds. how his eyes are boyish even while his brow is furrowed. how, after love, she turns on her side to face him, beads of sweat tracing the heavy undersides of her breasts. how he holds the glass of water to her lips, and she drinks. the erotics of offer and consent.
we can no longer name what binds us. the decay of memory makes partnership at once stiflingly familiar and shockingly alien. our knowledge becomes vague and ritual, the way great joys and great sorrows require memorial and public ceremony. in some moments, we love each other only viscerally, without reason. how great joys and great sorrows share the same intolerable breathlessness and must fade; how they are, in the end, indistinguishable.
the story of love must be written on the body, to avoid the terror of forgetting. lovers like the myth-writers of the ancients, as desperate and driven by passion. the vulnerable imprint of a fingernail. the lazy bitemark of satiety, of exhaustion. symbolic signposts of a dissolved boundary.
the thunderstorm neither tempers nor releases the interminable low heat of dusk. we expose, consume each other. the small hot tip of her tongue tracing the corner of his eye where tears collect. his thumb pressing the fullness of her lips, her lips with the softness of fruit, ripened like fruit with latent sun, and, like fruit, delicately opened. she removes her wedding ring and bites it between her teeth. the sharp, electric taste of metal, the sting of its flavor. desire blooms in her body.
he holds the glass of water to her lips, and she drinks. the vessel shatters.
outside, the twilight thunder.
.
.