Delicious Torment

"Thou art to me a delicious torment." Ralph Waldo Emerson

Does the beauty of words inspire you? Does the elegant simplicity make you want to weep?

I sit here and listen to the smooth liquid of Andrea Boceli’s voice. Soothing and stirring at the same time, it sends me into those teenage fantasies of a tall stranger who reads my mind, my darkest fantasy, and sweeps me away under his cloak.

He sees the poetry of my soul in my eyes. He reads it in the curve of my cheek, the flutter of my lashes as they sweep down to disguise my longing. His touch is strong, capable of bruising strength; yet he cradles me like delicate glass. Just when I’ve been lulled into a delicious wanting, the tempo changes and crashes around me as lust crushes the both of us into grasping and gasping wrestlers who must writhe to get skin as close as skin can get.

The words of desire he whispers burn in my ears and across my skin. I shudder and release more. I take more. I demand more. He gives. It is a circle, going round and round, spinning in a dance that I want never to end. Waking from my dreams, I am taken aback to find in the mirror’s reflection, a faint bruise on my shoulder…as if teeth might have left a claimer’s mark. My fingertips trace it…