butterflies, softened

It’s almost uncomfortable. almost.

The way you make me feel – unreal unfamiliar but not unclear. Even though I’ve never felt them before, I know exactly what they are. Butterflies.

I’ve heard people talk about this before, and thought them crazy or caught in the throes of some lustful intoxication that feels like lust but I’ve felt lust and this is no duplication. The funny thing is that it’s not constant, I only seem to get this electric fluttering when we’re on that same wavelength.

Like … connected. I hate that this feels fated. Men are normally the ones who feel that about me. And I enjoy that high and indulge. It’s easy for me to tune into other people, to feel their feelings in my body, to intuitively be able to draw the stress from their bodies, insinuate peace into their minds, to get them to feel me, to feel me the way they can see some version of the real me. I guess that’s the reason I’m always the one to leave.

But man… these butterflies. My belly dancing with your memory in it. Fluttering and diving, just thinking of you. Like an insane person. Like one of those crazy, about to fall off the cliff into love people. Man, am I in trouble…

I’m so afraid to feel this way, to be swept into being into you or letting you be into me and I can’t figure out why. I guess I am too impatient and both tired of waiting and in love with the agony of being only 80% sure that this fever is mutual. All I’ve got is what you say and do to me, which technically is enough but I hate assumptions. But there’s so much enjoyment in being courted and taking it slow.

So I can’t give in to the temptation yet. Not with the lingering promise ahead. Not when this living buzzing feeling inside feels so good.

Not when I know what I know in the light with you. Not when you tell me you can’t make love to me in the dark because you have to see me. Not when you climax from our kisses. Not when you say such brilliant things for no reason. Not when you remind me of my beauty. Not when you make such beauty out of sound.

Part of it IS lust. I admit that. I can’t lay on my stomach on my bed anymore – it always ends the same way with my thighs pressed together longing to feel you behind me..pushing… grinding… mmm….

Wait, what was I saying… oh yes… part of it IS lust but it’s only a part, this isn’t an accident, or just the juxtaposition of our bodies bringing each other earthly satisfaction. I guess it’s like you said, there’s no way we can keep away from each other and restrict this to “just friends”. Or that other time you talked about how we are so pulled to each other. Or how, given the chance, we go to crazy lengths to see each other for tiny snatches of time.

I learned this during our recent starvation from each other. I still couldn’t escape your eyes in my head, and this went way beyond wanting you back in my bed. I wanted you opinion, to hear you smile, to make you smile. And if I take this fate back to bedroom states, yes, I don’t just want to be pleasured by you, I want to find every way to please you that I can.

So infinite, definite, intangible, and yet real enough to touch. Lust and something turning into love, so scary when I normally have such control over my emotions. I can get to the edge and back up. With everyone else but you.

I hope. These butterflies will loan me wings…

So let me tell you how this thing went down, and, later, who this guy is to my heart and things.

In college, I knew this guy. I won’t go into too many details because I don’t want those of you who knew me in college to give the man the third degree, because really this is just starting back up. It hasn’t even been a week since we’ve become reacquainted.

Of course, from the first day we saw each other again after about 17 years, we’ve been together four out of the six days since then under extremely inconvenient circumstances.

But.

I’m really looking at this with both feet on the ground, hard as it is. If you ask my heart, that’s another story. Still, he makes me feel as if I don’t have to rush, as if I have a secure enough place to take my time.

Okay, so let’s get in the way back machine.

When I met this guy, I was in the second semester of my freshman year. I’d just started to find my people on campus. I started to frequent the school nightclub and it’s been so long I’m not sure if that’s where we met, or if we just ended up there. Anyway, we had the same circle of friends and hung out together, and somehow, I can’t quite remember how, we ended up pairing off.

I remember really digging him, great conversations, warm hugs, romantic and sensual sparks/events. It wasn’t quite long enough for us to be in a relationship though.

Just when we were getting to know each other better, something happened to him – a project he was on brought him fame and fortune. There came a choice between that, and finishing school. And the smart thing to do was to chase that dream and finish your degree later.

We lost touch over the years. I thought about him on occasion and would get word that he was doing well. What I didn’t know is that he was really getting successful at what he was doing, traveling the world, meeting people I see on TV, hear on the radio, and read about in tabloids.

Now, I’ve never been one to be star-struck or to think that knowing/being with famous people makes you better than other people. I’ve known and met famous people and I only ever got geeked over literary icons. Because 1- I’m a nerd, and 2- some people regard me as famous in my tiny part of the internet, so I know how it feels to be on the receiving end of it.

However, in the field he is in, the people he worked with represented dream opportunities, they’re all names you would recognize, and I’m proud of the work he’s done, so I’m mentioning it here. It’s also relevant to the story.

To continue, this is how we got back in touch.

You ready?

FREAKING FACEBOOK!

I know, right? Crazy.

He was in touch with a friend of mine who I was recently back in touch with and she told him I was on Facebook. He contacted me in January. I bantered back and forth with him a bit, then he said he wanted to talk to me. I, asshole that I am, didn’t call him back for five days. I really wanted to let Valentine’s Day pass before I spoke to any male on the planet. Ha.

But I spoke to him shortly before Valentine’s day. And every day since then. During one of our discussions, we discovered that I had something rare he wanted to borrow. I’m barely 45 minutes from him without traffic, so we’d made arrangements to meet last week on Thursday.

We ended up seeing each other on Wednesday instead, then on Thursday as planned. Then almost every day since then, we’ve been together. He’s going through some drama, some unbelievable messed up crap that would make my hair fall out, but he’s driving nearly hour out of his way almost every day to come and see me.

So that covers the back story. I’ll talk about all the other stuff next.

i.

i write life on thin skin looking within for words that will make me less sensitive to the burn of existence.

i look for love inside and outside and up and down and sometimes i find it in the first place i looked and sometimes i find that what i was looking for is an illusion i cannot touch and in my confusion i trip over lust and fall into love.

sprained my ankle once and couldn’t get away from the eyes i erected in my mind and the free flow that i found in his words. his words reached out to my inner secrets brushed up against the innocence i was hiding even from myself.

his words chased me inside myself and i found out i was running from love into misery before he came.
his words would not let me escape from reality.

ii.

it’s all in the details baby girl, he said.

lay down. yeah. right there. no, no just lay there. i want to see you. i like to see your body waiting for me. put your arms down love. yeah. like that. just wait for me. i’m right here, no need to reach for me. i just

….want to see you.

looking at your toes, and this new polish pedicure fetish you developed to keep the attention of my mouth. let me…taste them… do you really like this better than… mmmmm. you got some big feet girl. sexy lil anklet…

to go with those strong calves, is it from driving a stick?

and them big thighs… thank god for Queens. not supersized or skinnified and i love your curves and the way your stomach sticks out despite all that sitting up you do.

keep jogging if you want to but don’t lose those hips or those ripe, ripe melons swinging like forbidden fruit before me… is that why you like my big hands, because i can hold a D-cup?

don’t cover your eyes…

Sweetie, why you getting all shy?

iii.

details. in the details. the way he looks at me with those eyes, 161 eyelashes on the end of the left eyelid. i counted once, have looked in his eyes that long every day we are together, long enough to count the eyelashes on the end of the left eyelid.

he breathes in such lovely spirals, i can see it when it’s cold and i just want to be in his air, hope always for that moment before the kiss where i will be wondering how long he’s going to let my hunger burn.

details. in the De-Tails. the details of the pores of the skin on his face.

that is the face i love, the face that bathes me in moonbeam streams of honesty. he loves so many places in me, inside me, all the things i think are flaws, he finds adorable….

details.
details of a long longing because i had gone almost 39 hours without his voice. i counted. yes, i counted.

details.
details of a sneaky memory telling my body what i want to forget until i see him again.

that i want him, that i desire his touch on my shoulder or my stomach or my knee or my eyes… just to have him caress me with his eyes…

details.
details of a lover’s flesh pressed against the best organ i have, skin, skin with nerve endings to tell me his love is real and on top of me and moving into me, and this memory bites me hard because he is not here and i only have my hands to comfort me, hands that are deft to speed me to the beginning of the end again and put me back at the end of the beginning, the end of the yearning that comes before the need to be touched, but not by myself, only a sorry sorry substitute even when it’s electronic his worst performance is the emancipation of my loneliness and some of my life’s best because it’s so stained with the love that is overcoming us both on his face and in my eyes.

details. like at the start of an orgasm, the loudest lover i have ever had. and it charges me so to hear him sing the imminence of his physical inner madness that will explode inside me vibrating me from inside the canal of my love and drips down into my thighs and rides my blood into the rest of my body.

details.

details.
details……

Lagos, Ikoyi Bay

I want to go home. Back to the Yoruba land where my family is from, where my ancestors are from. Back to where my pain is from. Back to where my so-called exotic roots were born.

Several times here I’ve mentioned the childhood sexual abuse in my past. I’ve found it very freeing to be able to talk about the fact that it happened, to not be the one who feels like I should be ashamed anymore. That shame was almost worse than the pain itself and the emotional after affects.

Some people don’t see what a big deal it is. And that’s okay with me, as long as they aren’t advocating that it happen to people, especially children. I’ve had male friends and lovers call me impure, or tainted, or damaged because of what happened to me, particularly after learning the horrifying extent.

The extent… the first three months after my family temporarily moved to West Africa, there was an incident almost every day. I was 9. I can’t remember most of what happened to me before I was 9 years old without some drama. In some cases there are years blocked out.

And so, I haven’t been back to Nigeria since 1984. I was born here, there seemed to be mostly pain there, so even for my only female cousin’s wedding, who is practically like a sister to me, I could not go back.

But now that time has passed, now that I have spent more than 20 years processing and healing, even though I still have night terrors, I want to go back. The earth calls to me, the sky writes my name.

There’s an opportunity for me to visit in January. I’m seriously considering staying there a year, because even if the economy is bad here, in Nigeria I could live off $500 – $1000 a month quite comfortably, and put all of the rest of what I make each month away. My sister will be there with her husband, who is like a brother to me, and their two kids. My mother will be there. And I’ll see my grandmother again before she passes on.

I would like to see home again. Though I consider myself an American, and was born and mostly raised here, I was brought up in the culture of our homeland. I’m a little afraid to go, to be a foreigner, essentially, who knows the national language of English, but isn’t fluent in the local language.

Still. I’m hoping…

this.
has to stop.

I keep thinking it’s under control and that sane moments are prevailing and that eventually, maybe this one time, today, I will wake up and not love you. Because yesterday I was at least over the love letter enough to speak to you without telling you that I want to start a forever with you today. I thought I spoke very sensibly, and that while there was some aftermath of slicked thighs and caramel thoughts of skin pressed together, the logical conclusion for me was that this was lust.

not Love

which.
has to stop.

One love song.

One stupid, sappy, sentimental sensitive, sensory recollection embedded in a love song dissolved me back in time, salty tears mixing with the ocean of the love I hold inside for you.

One song and I’m ruined, progress discarded. I thought all the venting of my soul was supposed to help me reclaim my control, my dominance over my heart and my thoughts and my resolve not to pursue this until the time is right or maybe not at all.

Wait, when did I start saying “until the time is right” or “maybe” not at all? I can’t have these thoughts because they are blurring into fantasies I can’t handle and

that.
has to stop.

Then there’s the pining. Seriously, am I 12? I’m supposed to be in lust, so where is all this internal whining coming from? Why can’t I just get. a grip. And go back to the empty quiet life I had, slowly building an ice wall around myself in a comfy cool separation? How did you get back into my head?

And since when do I think about you when I’m not in bed? And why can’t I fight against my emotions, or at least just pretend that in the end I’ll

be able to
…stop …