2005
Totally
© 2005 Sandra Jean-Pierre
I sit and look out the window.
The world is happening again. The world is moving, humming like I am not here. Like I should not worry about existing… like I am right where I am supposed to be. Between the car honks in f minor and the rumbling city noise, the world his happening and I… am here.
The cool clipped breeze brushes my cheek, the one perpetually swollen from laying on it. I can’t explain why, I just seem to fall into this slumber stupor and manage to lay on that side. Every time. It puffs up slightly, like it is filled with all the sleep that I manage to over-sleep; like a squirrel storing nuts in his cheek. Except I am no squirrel.
I suck in the cheek, maybe hoping it will deflate on it’s own but I know it won’t.
I back away from the window, ashamed that this is what I can find to occupy my mind, at times like this. The cool clipped air wafts through, griping my short sleeve clad arms. I shiver.
She will be here.
This I know. Although I do not know why I let her in, I know she will come and that I won’t stop her. I push my control sideways, aiming for the kitchen. The bearing in my front left tire makes this crushing metal on metal sound, then pops and rights itself as I move continuously forwards. The bearing is gone; needs to be replaced but I know I won’t fix it now, no matter how much noise it makes or how embarrassed I get when it does this racket when I go out.
I sigh.
I reach the counter for a banana, peel it part way and place a piece of the cool, sweet fruit into my mouth. I imagine she will inspect me the same. Tasting my texture and sweetness, my flavor and firmness. I feel sick but I know to throw this banana away would be to waste the potassium it has given its life for. So I finish it, not thinking about her… or what I am doing.
I lean my elbows on my knees and ease forward in my chair. I’m sure from a distance, I look like I have just set down a heavy load and am taking a rest after many miles of travel, by foot. But what I really feel is the load being heaped onto me, with no recourse in rejecting it. I hear the front door knob turn open and her sneaker clad feet pad in. I wait.
“What’s going on Atlas?”
I lift my head and look to the left. She is leaning on the counter that separates the kitchen area from the front door and living room. Her wavy black hair being taken out of the ponytail she keeps it in. Her posture waxes sultry, in her men’s t-shirt, full breasts nearly hidden behind the enveloping fabric. I close my eyes, praying that my crumbling emotions do not betray me.
“Nothing.” I mumble, looking down.
I know that I do not want her, like this, in this fashion. I know that I want more than what we have found ourselves doing.
She misses the catch in my breathing. She is this creature that I cannot refuse. I know the more I give myself like this, the less I will have left, for me.
She stands to the left of me, as my head is once again down. I feel her calloused hand, reach into the back of my shirt from the neck part. Her palm spanning most of the center of my back. She continues, reaching for the small of my back now, worming past the waistband of my loose sweats. I shiver.
“Like that…?” More of a statement than a question.
I utter a guttural answer; neither yes or no. I lift my head in time to see the smirk on her lips. I am caught, a dear in headlights. She, the huntsman with the gun or bow and arrow.
“Come.” She tells me, like I would have any other choice. She makes her familiar way around the apartment, throwing her hair band on the dining room table, dropping her keys in the bookshelf niche by the hallway. My bearing begins its racket. She stops. Looks at me, then down at the offending noise.
“You should get that fixed.”I offer another guttural answer. We continue on back, to the waiting bed.
Through the door of the bedroom, I find her sitting on the edge of the bed. Waiting. I enter facing her and she removes my footrests, piling them in a nearby corner. They clang in objection. I can only look in their direction.
Her hand turns my face to her. I look down.
“I know what you need…”
She breathes in through her nostrils, drawing her lips together, as if clearing her mouth from something she has just eaten. She leans in, brushing her lips gently against mine. Breathing through her nostrils. She rubs her cheek against mine. Heavy with desire,
“God… you smell so good. I want you so much.” Her jaw clenches with the last word.
Her voice sounds like a crisp November evening, in front of a fire. I begin to shiver.
Her lips meet mine again, this time, her tongue begging entrance. Soft, gentle, she enters with no protest from me. I feel myself being drawn through a water well, from the darkness, into the light. I moan, tears forming at the corners of my eyes.
“Oh baby….mmmmmm…” She puts her hands around my torso in a bear hug, pulling me to a semi-standing
position. We pivot, this dance of will and desire. I feel the bed on the back of my knees and I collapse backwards, she falling on top of me, quickly shifting, removing the bulk of her weight off of me.
Shimmying down, she pulls my sweats and undies with her, burying her nose between my legs, she inhales, moans, sighs. She removes my shoes and the sweats from around my softly swelling ankles, kissing the insides of my knees as she makes to stand, shedding her own clothes, before joining me back on the bed.
My eyes, now closed, swim beneath my lids, more tears forming their union, to strike. Putting my arms above my head, she pulls the t-shirt off, revealing my small breasts. Her eyebrow raises.
“No bra this time… hmmm.” Quickly, her mouth finds my cinnamon-rose nipple. I feel her teeth bite down softly, then pull. My back finds its arch involuntarily.
“Ohhhhh…..mmmm…” I gasp, betraying the fact that I am crying, for all the things that she will tell me, that I would like to believe, that won’t come true, that I need to hang on to anyway.
“That’s my girl… that’s it honey… you’re so beautiful…”
I bite my lower lip, turning my head away from her eyes. Embarrassed that she will open me, that I will allow
her, that I know I have other choices, that I am still choosing this, like this… always this.
Her lips kiss my belly and I tremble. Afraid to tell her to stop, that this will be another mistake that I will stay awake regretting into the night. More tears join the brigade as I clench my teeth. Lower, later, she finds her treasure and my breathing stops.
She bends my legs at the knees, propping my legs open, with pillows beneath the outside of my knees. I feel like a frog, about to be dissected but instead of it being my an amateur, it will be by her experienced, hands and tongue and…
She traces her finger from the bottom of my belly button to the end of my clit. I harden. My hands, beneath the pillows that are propping open my knees, I clench them into fists. Her fingers part me, looking, peering into my folds, my moisture. She leans to me ear.
“Breathe…” and she retreats, blowing a steady stream of air across my swollen clit. It feels like burning fire and I feel like I have to pee. I squirm. Her tongue finds my hole and enters, while her teeth grate against my clit. I lose my sense of position, all I know is that this bed better hold up because I can’t hold on.
Two fingers enter and a tongue swirls against everything else. I feel my muscles clamping down on her fingers and they suddenly don’t feel enough, I want more, all of her, inside me. I whimper.
“What do you want?” She teases, knowing I hate to ask, especially like this.
“I want you…mmmmmm, you…” I stutter.
“Oh yeah… what do you want from me?”
Tears flood from my eyes and they open, unfocused, staring at the ceiling.
“I want all of you… inside…please.”
Her fingers enter, curling into a fist inside and I explode, muscles vice-like around her fist. Random colors detonate behind my eye lids, my voice only whimpering.
“Oh baby… yes… this is what I want to see.”
Her lips kiss my belly, she kisses my lips, then licks the tears from the sides of my face. I can only shed fresh tears anew. She massages the outside of my belly, easing her hand out, slowly. When her hand is free, I can only feel emptier than I have ever known.
“You did well my dear…” She embraces me, closing my legs and pulling me onto her, pulling a blanket around us. She rocks me, stroking my back, cooing in my ear.
I rest on top of her, finding nothing soothing in her caress any longer. Only the exhaustion sends me off to another moment of slumber.
I awake to find her sitting on the floor, arms leaning on the edge of the bed, watching me sleep. The ring she gave me, that went un-worn in the last few weeks, in the space between her and I.
“Why isn’t this on?”
I stare at the stones, missing the feel of the band around my finger.
“Because of what you do to me.” I blink.
“We’ve been over this before. There isn’t anything I can do. I want to be here with you everyday but it just can’t be that way.”
Yet she wants me to wear her ring, she wants to come to my bed when she pleases and I can’t have her for the bad days, when my back doesn’t feel well, or when I happen to feel more disabled than usual.
“I don’t understand why it’s so hard for you to be here.”
“Baby, I do want to be here, it’s just not that simple… but things will change, soon.”
“What does soon mean?”
“Soon.”
“You know I don’t believe you… I can’t believe what you tell me any more.”
“I know.”
She gets up, dresses, sits in my chair. I pull the sheet up around my neck.
“What am I supposed to do now?” I choke.
“I don’t know…”
The door pulls and clicks softly. I know she will be back again. No matter the detriment to me, I know I will let her back in again.
The ring glints in the evening twilight. If I could, I would crush it to dust. Blow it in the breeze. Send it on its mission. It has no home here; there is nothing more that I can give.
Conflicted. I can only wait, for the next time, moment, second when she comes again.
The nurse will be here in the morning. She will not ask any questions but I know, she too is tired of seeing me like I am seeing myself. She will only shake her head as she bathes me, dresses me, feeds me, wondering why it is not Her, doing these things for me.
I can only go through the motions of living, wondering why it is not Her doing these things for me as well.
Yet for all the stopping that I have been doing, the world will keep happening…and I, will be right here.
