Days where I'm nostalgic for poems I haven't written

For  words I haven't said

For feelings I used to have

But now I can't remember what they felt like

Anything can be sad if you look at it the right way

Anything can be glorious if you sit low enough

You came back
A Karmic kiss in my DMs
A sputtering start
Formed by my fears
Smoothed into a languid forgiveness
I never dreamed would be mine

Such a special gift
To communicate with you
To think that one day
I might again lay like a cat
Coyly atop the sheets
And read you a poem
Etched from the friction of my longing

Or that I would just get to smile
At you from across a table

Or take a bath
Or text you while I'm in the bath
Or hug your body
And let all the sweetness
I've held for you all these years
Bubble over

Will I cry when I see you face?
Will you let me hold your cheeks in my palms?
Take you in?
See how you've changed?
You became a man in my hands
In my body
I can't wait to see the man you've become
To see your new body
Tattooed and built

I hope one day we can be old friends
I hope you are a man who respects women
I hope you are still so sweet
I hope you don't notice the new depth of my laugh lines
Since you saw me last
I hope you marvel at the length of my hair
As I know I will marvel at the shortness of yours
I hope you let me touch the back of your skull
I hope you wrap me up tight

I have a vision of our meeting
I'm wearing a royal blue, loose knit sweater
Over a bra with jeans
I feel the strength of your arms
As you wrap around my lower back
I bend backward slightly and we both feel safe

And I hope there is still
A vulnerability in you
That is familiar to me
I hope you'll make me feel 23

Sweet confession
"You're the meteorite"
Sweet validation
"I like that"

Life is full of surprises
Our reconnection has taught me
That love is never lost
Good ones come back around
And my life is pure magic
I need only let longing warm the space behind my heart
Write poetry
Dream
And lost darlings will come back to me.

Nothing so soft and inviting as your skin
Your lips like little heavens
Your eyes holding thousands of celestial bodies
Electric connections in your freckles
Your glowing cheek bones
And texture of your laugh lines
The way your upper lip covers your teeth when you’re being silly
Your delicate fingers
Your forward and bold shoulders and the way you make me feel something new when you hold me
When you pull me in with desire I feel something some unexpected magic that I though died in 6th grade animate in fluttering movements
Your subtlety
Your gentleness
Your ventless embrace of life
Your ******* shaped by an artist
So round and cupped and just in between petite and full
Your *** with dimples and delicious weight
Your long legs
A retired runner
The rhythm in your shoulders
Your *** appeal
The length of your neck
The sweet wild sparse little forest of dark hairs on your abdomen conspiring to make me love you even more
Your pouting *****
Your perfect face
Your golden back
The tightness of your tummy, or the bloat when you’ve had too much coffee
The levity in your footsteps
The wisdom in your voice
The softness in your voice
The cackling child in your laugh
The vulnerability of your honesty
So careful with me and maybe me with you too
That vein on your slender but firm bicep
The way you look in my passenger seat
The many beautiful boundless expressions of your hair
The beauty mark on your *****
Your darling moans  
Your balance of masculine and feminine
Your hand on the small of my back
The way it made me feel so many new ways
Like a teenager, like a woman, important, protected, loved, important, worth protecting
Your slow love
I bet you don’t know I feel all this way
How could you know
I never told you all this
Would you like to know now?
Would it be fair to tell you now
That you’re committed to someone bolder than me
With more time to give

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