Incarnata

I tried and failed. Where was the love in my heart? Where raging passions once burned – was an empty space, a quiet space, a void. My body seemed to be crumbling around it… failing slowly. A stiff back from nights in this mockery of a bed, skin burnt in an instant from a morning in the new spring desert sun despite every precaution, a badly burned wrist seared from an unwise combination of wine and late night cooking…. and the weather vane of my life is spinning in all directions, again…. yet, somehow there is peace. Or is it more an alien neutrality of emotion with nothing in my heart? Should I be terrified or relieved? Fortunately, God has blessed me with good work to lose myself in…

But, let me dream of all the qualities that would inspire love…. sweetness, humor, laughter, patience, strength of will, mind, body and spirit. Determination, ingenuity, trustworthiness, loyalty, wisdom, sensitivity, masculinity…. kisses that make my head spin, arms eager to hold and keep me. A body that is firm to touch, eyes that speak in silence (so that I can read the past, present, and future….) and a heart which beats with love unafraid, unashamed – so that I will be brave and feel the spirit of the earth rise within, begging for all of life to exist and flourish, if for only this one, exact, moment.

Let it linger…..

Dancing until we are both breathless with laughter, in the garden gazebo will you find me alluring under the stringed white lights, enough to be overcome? Stop me. Press your lips to mine and like a song that tells a story of romance so true, felt by bards of years past and children future, kiss me. Kiss me with all that lives within you and I shall kiss you back, with the mysterious wellspring of my being. The goddess Aphrodite lives inside me and it is to her I pray – to fill me up with the secrets of beauty and love so that I am ever her vase. That is why the damp heat of you is my Eden, my reason for being. And when you kiss me by the ear, and my neck, my shoulder…. I become passiflora incarnata in the sun, transformed in a moment to be your wild breathless one.

I’m holding you in my heart. Come home to me, my hero…. my dream…. I shall be wandering by the sea shore, writing poems in the sand for you. Trailing my fingers across the damp surface of the beach, as if it were your body, strong and cast in sweet sweat, urgent for the soft curves of me against you. And when the tide comes in, your lips, which I shall kiss to remind me of the wetness of your mouth and the sparkle that never leaves your eyes. See me making garlands of shells? This is for the bower over our bed and with each one I string, I say, “Flower of passion be thine, pure of heart be mine, and in love may we be joined as one.”

Aphrodite, do you hear?