I haven’t been tasting any sweetness
in this pressing, sultry summer air
for the longest time.
I think I forgot, how it moves and dances,
how it unfolds at the start, delicately but surely,
how it intensifies, builds a body,
solidifies with grace.
How a soft, tingly edginess manifests
that lets you dwell on it
long after it’s already gone for good.
How it melts away with an aftertaste
that makes you ache for more,
knowing that if you weaken your will,
it could engulf you,
swallow you whole.
Oddly enough, you would be pleased about it,
because somehow it numbs all the pain.

You remind me of a still pond,
hidden in a fast forest that’s likely enchanted,
surrounded by thick oaks and tall fir trees that stroke the clouds
with their bristle fingertips.
Your water is pressing and steady
and your surface is clear,
almost sharp.
Ready to frighten away whoever is too scared of the dark,
but still willing to mirror the shapes of the moon in all its phases,
open to receive its shimmering silver light.
I can sense a depth that I might never be able to understand,
maybe there is a ground I will never be able to reach,
no matter how deep I dive
through this dense stillness.
When I first bravely touched your surface with my toes,
I expected an offensive chill or a stroke of electricity
that would surge like lightning through my veins.
But somehow none of it happened.
You just embraced me with your edges
and let me sink in,
like feathers of pillows do:
seemingly comfortably but never completely.

Who are you?, I wonder.
And I wonder still.

There is another sanctuary for water,
in another reality,
up high above sea level, framed by rugged mountains,
right underneath a gleaming afternoon sun.
I remember my own laughter so vividly;
it shattered the tranquility
of perfect, almost untouched, nature.
A surrounding that does not bend or mend for anyone,
not even for luminous states of glee,
since it always has and forever will
follow its own timing
and its own rules.
My body felt tired but awakened in that moment
as we lay side by side
atop of what usually engulfs everything
wholly. Apart from those,
who know,
how to float.
Your arm touched mine in a nonchalant way
that felt like
more.
Not in a significant way,
but as if there was something only the future could unveil.
As we figured out the pattern of how the clouds in the sky
were queuing their way in one direction,
we turned our curious gazes towards one another
and somehow this is when I knew
what I had to know,
although I would never quite be able to put it into sentences.
Ah there,
a silence that speaks of whole centuries.
We shared space and a few seconds of our separate lives,
as I noticed the water glistening on your face
and the placid shades in your eyes.
There was this weightlessness in the locking of our eyes,
in what was clear and transparent but still had substance.
What I found across me, could be easily mistaken for sheer brilliance,
but it’s not as plain as that.

There and then,
us barely knowing any aspects of one another,
you temporarily offered me your side.
A thread of trust I was willing to give.
You let me rest my head with its twirling thoughts.
A gesture that felt inherently innocent,
and that gave me the chance to alter what I conceive as 
what is.
You gave me a sweet remembrance to forever sensually relocate to,
to revisit for as long as I need to,
– for me, my mind, my dreams,
and no one else.
What I would later learn is,
that sometimes when you tighten your embrace around me,
when you cocoon me in and wrap me further,
until all I can sense is your loud presence around me,
I lose all sense of gravity
and forget about fear.
Right then and there,
exhaustedly,
I might strip off my beaten up armor
and the readiness to fight the world.
And for a fleeting moment, I can be this grown up woman,
who may relax her jaw,
who may allow her buried, tender sides,
to surface as a shy little sprout.
If you would only know,
how few people have gotten to touch the skin,
have heard the tone of the voice,
as it surfaces now,
while you hold her this way.
Even her,
she has almost forgotten,
the reverberation
and boundlessness
of her own brave presence
in a situation that might hold an honest chance at its core.

xxj.

[Let me idealize you for a little while. Yes?

Yes you are a whirlwind too,
a powerful force that tears down walls.
It reminds me of a side
I, myself, hide too well, because it would
tear down countries.
So I know this peculiarity,
I can naturally deal with it.
But this side of you cannot touch me,
because if it does,
I will be too eager and swift
to begin to glow bright like the molten core of vivid lava,
which carves its way through every single layer that exists,
and then, on the surface,
I will carbonize and thicken to stone
until at some point staggered in time
I explode into war.]