His Language
“Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” – Hebrews 11:1
I look up at him with open eyes
Trying to open them, perhaps, a little wider
than the capacity my eyelids can naturally spread
in hopes that by somehow
Opening wider I can accept every ounce of what the world might consider
A version of his love.
I want it all. I grasp him.
I dig my nails deep into his back;
I draw him nearer letting him into the deepest part of me.
I relax for him
so that I can again receive all he unconsciously is willing to give me.
I’m quiet now, eyes clinched-shut
In hopes that I might not disturb him as he gets lost in another world and might
Accidently forget and love me before he realizes that
I am still here
That I am still heaving, that tears are still silently rolling down my cheeks
For the love that him, or him, or him could give me.
I let him take off my bra even though that's the part I hate most.
And the part he struggles with most, in hopes that
The contours of my pre-menstrual plump breasts and the deep arch of my back would some how trick him into loving me—
The way he can love me.
WE are lost in transaction.
I am lost in translation. HE is lost in translation.
We speak different languages
So I must speak his—with my body.
I hope that if he can somehow see that I am precious
That within his calloused hands holds a precious child of God then
“Oh,” I will speak his language—with my body, I shake
from the intersection where unceasing throbbing and pleasure meet.
My pleasure is “lying” on this stage called bed that we both pretend in.
I tell him just pretend—please
“Can you just pretend?”
Though we cannot act with words, because sometimes they fail,
we act with hands, with sweat, with his moans, with my silence
with the sounds our bodies begin to imitate of
the lovers that pretend on computer screens.
His kisses linger. The tips of our tongues blushing at one another because
No greater love can be exchanged.
His breath in my ear whispers,
“Shh, can you hear it?” the thin presence of love
—don’t break it, woman.
For a few indefinite moments we work as One;
Symbiotic machines, oil spilling with fluid motion,
Mental wheels stop churning, only the physical forces
we input: in, out, in, out
Because we know how it works.
And We are One until he must leave,
Because they all must leave
Pulling out because his love—it—was never for me.
Instead it drips away through fingers
As he holds it for himself because he cannot truly pretend enough
To leave me with his love.
Tears silently rolllll, “Shh, can you feel it?”
My eyes search upon his body to see if he felt
For one second what I felt. But,
Birds chirp as my soul flies away in the wind
Because it can no longer exist comfortably within the confines
Of my heaving lungs.
My eyes struggle to make out, as we make out, if his eyes
Are open, if his mind is open to love me…
Not in the ‘tie him down way,’ but in the ‘never leave, never judge these tears,
please heal my open wounds, please tell me you know the answer way.’
He moves closer, acting, on this stage as if
we’ve fooled each other in this game of pretend.
Oh how I wish it wasn’t pretend, but
I know his capabilities more than he knows them
Or rather is willing to articulate in front of me.
Arms hold me tight as his lips draw nearer to seal the early morning.
And my walls move back up guarding—
My heart clenches harder as his lips
Draw nearer and the dawn shines clearer.
My hope struggles along but
I will speak his language.