Strange to think
How many men have known your body
And I know in my heart of hearts
That none saw you the way I see you
I'm probably a fool
To say this

I felt that you had revealed yourself to me
And me to you
When we woke up in the morning
Sprung out of bed fresh
Clean, new, sweet
And took in each other's forms
With such splendor and delicacy
Wrapping you in my arms
While you wrapped me in yours
And a completeness I'd never known
Blew through me
As your lower belly expanded
Deep, full breaths into mine
Inviting me to release
Womb to womb
Cheeks breathing puffs of air
Beside each other
I've never known a fuller love

A shy 'wow' from your mouth
At the sight of my curves
Holds my heart in suspense

No man has ever seen me the way you did
And many men have seen me well
With eyes that see me only the way they can
But you saw me with a tenderness
Only woman can express
And I believe I saw you the same way

The secret language of women
Who love women
Know that I saw you as only my eyes can
In the caves and forests
In the soft moss of my mind
Near the bubbling creek
In the rivers and sweet leaves of fall
The bending stems of wild flowers
In summer wind
I saw you

I find romance in my body
Dreams laid in my skin
Romance in the shapes
Colors flushed or pallid
Textures, sensations of my body
Endeared to myself
As my hair touches my face
Like a lover might
That grainy golden mood of night
That escaped so long ago
Greets me as my eyes learn
About the mind they rest beside
From my own collection of books
The way I would study
The literature on a lovers nightstand
I study my own
Wonder what clues I can learn
About myself
From my bedroom
My art
The state of my bathroom sink
The temperament of my cat
The art of my feet
I am learning myself
With curiosity and tenderness
And feeling privileged to know such a woman
The way only I can know myself
No stranger's hands ***** my waist
Or feel the delicious weight of my *******
No familiar smelling human
With a nose I know
Slumbers in my bed
And finally I am not lonely without them
The sweet, warm smell of my *****
Doesn't make me wish someone was inside me
Nor does it make me want to be inside me
I just appreciate
My many states
My phases; waning and waxing
My sameness
The many updates to my mind
That allow me to experience the realness of this sensation
The realness of my stomach on my bed
The realness of my fingers as I type
The realness of the craving for chocolate on my tongue
I am content as I adore myself
No need for someone else
To come adore
I am safe in my body
In my good good body
I am safe to sense myself
My bathroom sink is clean
And my cat purrs beside me.

I'm thinking of my old lovers all the time
All the time they are on my mind
I think of texting them
Unblocking them
Looking them up on Linkedin
And I can't
Or I don't
What if I'm disappointed?
What if I would be inviting the wrong energy into myself?
What if they come and the magic is gone?
But all I want to do is smoke a ******* cigarette
On the water
While I get too tipsy off an aperol spritz
And a hot man looks at me and rubs my calf
While he thinks about how to get me into bed
Or better yet,
He already has me in his bed
And he still acts like he's working to get me there
I want to be touched
Tenderly and aggressively
I want to be lifted and throbbed
I want to feel hot, tequila breath on my neck
While a sweaty, hairy chest looms over my back
While a hard **** enters me
And one hand holds my throat and the other holds my hip
Holding me in place to **** me just right

But then the problems arise in my mind
The problems are as follows:
1) who would I select? an old lover? Probably not, they are in the past for a reason, and yet a new one I can't be sure of
2) what if the *** is bad? And I give myself some new trauma to overcome. The vessel of my newly healing ***** is so tender and I could easily disturb the climate of peace growing there, rip the tender shoots from their roots because I want so badly to get manhandled

Aren't these problems just fears?
And why shouldn't I be afraid?
After the three assaults of 2018-2019 *** wasn't the same anymore
It's less to do about the assault of 2009
But even as I type that
"2009"
I remember that I was just a sophomore in high school
The womanness in me barely beginning to grow
And those roots were brutally ripped out of the new soil
The new leaves on my sweet spring green branches
Were torn and smudged
And the soft velvet of my body was ripped
And new pollen was discarded

So of course 2009 also matters
And it's so shocking
2009 sounds like a time for babies to exist
Not a year for brutal assaults
But what can you do? Things happen as they happen.

Anyway.
After the assaults of 2018-2019
I went back to Tony
My stallion
My perfect ****
My daddy
My sweet long beach lover
And I left shaking
Unable to connect
Unable to **** or *** or play in the same way
I left reliving the rapes of the summer, fall and winter
And then no *** was the same
No *** was as free
And now I still have this overwhelming feeling
That the good years are gone
But that can't be true. I know it's not true.

My ***** just needs to heal
And it's hard to heal from ****
When I crave a good, sweaty **** down
And I am afraid to have it
Because what if I get triggered
And then I feel like a broken woman
Or what if I get triggered
And I say hey I'm triggered
And I don't beat myself up for getting triggered
And I don't get embarrassed and I don't cry
And it's okay
So many what-ifs

But I know I'm not broken
And anyway my goal in life is not to **** well
The measure of wholeness is not how well I ****
If I don't enjoy *** exactly right now
that is okay and is not a reflection of my wholeness
I am whole

And yet still
I want a ******* cigarette
and a spritz
and an espresso
and a hairy man with a big chest
wearing an open button down
who looks at me
like he'd like to ravish me any minute
and within all of that
I want never to think
never to worry
never to feel unsafe
or triggered
I want my brain to dissipate
but my brain doesn't feel safe
leaving me alone with my body
with my body where dangerous moments have left scars
and that is why I am trying to cultivate safety in my new garden

Safety in the body
Safety in the body
Safety in the body

and even better would be then to feel safety against someone else's body
safety with someone else inside my body
I feel so lame feeling scared
Feeling scared makes me feel weak
It's toxic I know
It's utterly toxic

But the point is that I am actually safe
I am utterly safe
And if I were to decided to find someone to ****
Right now
Either from my past
Or someone new
I would vet them
And then
The **** would be safe.

How did I do it back then?
At 5'2, inviting strange men to my HOME
Men all above 6'2 by the way
Muscular, fit, strong, healthy
Total strangers into my house and never ever feeling afraid
Knowing they were safe
And you know what
The ones who I knew were safe actually were always ******* safe
And if they showed me that they were less than safe
And I had my faculties in place
I left them
Or made them leave
I did.

I did my best to protect myself at every turn as best I could
And it still didn't work 100%
but I guess that's not true huh?
I could have valued my gut more
Said no earlier
Not had the shot that felt strange
Because I had many many shots
That felt great with safe men
Who wanted to have a good time
And we did have a good time
And everyone went home or to bed or to wherever happy
So it wasn't about the shot
It was about the feeling in my gut that didn't want it
And the women beside me who said go ahead
And the betrayal of my instincts.

And isn't this all just a part of the journey of life
as a woman re-learning to listen to herself
And listening to myself now
having said all this
I suppose it's fine that no man
Is laying in my bed hoping to impress me by playing guitar
Ready to lick me and squeeze me and touch me.

But I would still love a cigarette by the water
and an espresso
and a man bringing me a cool, strong drink
who wants to rub my feet
and **** me mindless
as the sun goes down
I want to forget my name
in someone else's arms
who also forgets their name
inside my perfect, precious, healed *****.

We went to a pool party
Of a friend of a friend
We had ****** before
But decided to stop
Because we were working on a documentary together
Anyway we went to some pool party
And he judged the dark hairs on my thighs
That I didn't shave
I couldn't be bothered to care
I played up my attraction to the women there
For his enjoyment
We got quite tipsy
And went back to mine to work on the doc
We smoked a joint on the balcony
We got faded and swoopy
He kissed me and we went to my bed
I was riding him and wanting his to slap me
It excited me
But he wouldn't do it
So instead I slapped him
He was confused at first
So I slapped him again, a bit harder
And then he was a bit annoyed
I slapped him again
He told me okay, stop
So I slapped him again and as I did I stuck out my tongue
I slapped him again and again and finally he got angry
And saw my game
He slapped me and I squirted all over him
He saw how much I loved it
And he did it again and again
It was all I could do to ruin my sheets
And cover us in my ***
Finally he came, we were a mess of *** and slaps
Even as we lay there haphazardly slung across the bed
Sideways and hanging off
His long, long, long arm could still extend to my face
And laying there, breathing heavy and slow
He kept tapping my cheek with his finger tips
And my **** kept throbbing

I climbed a tree
Praised it's firmness
Then judged it's dead leaves
And then it said to me:
Don't love me because of how I make you feel
Love me because I am a living thing among living things

The other morning
I hugged my favorite tree
After climbing high up in her branches
And she said to me
After a judgment slipped through my thoughts
That so many of her under branches were dead
I wondered if something was wrong with her
I wondered if something was wrong with me
For loving her so
And she said to me
"Don't love me for the way I make you feel,
Love me because I am a living thing among living things"

Slowly thinking thoughts
while cooking a late dinner in a
dimly lit kitchen,
A quiet I haven't said hello to
in a long time,
But I suppose she's always been here
Waiting for me to slowly think my thoughts