by C.B. Allen
(10/18/06)

She comes swirling in their back door with a bang. He sets down his book and glances at the clock: 11:11.

He feels his tiredness lift slightly with her return. The rising thrill in his chest is now familiar, the same electric feeling as when they first met. They've been together three years now, through the honeymoon and hating stages, and he wonders that he still feels this excited to be near her.

She jumps into the shower, does a quick soap, careful to keep her hair away from the water, and lets the evening wash off her. Yoga. She never thought that it would become so all-encompassing that she would find herself teaching something she thought of as a lifestyle...but here she is. Here I am.

Stretching each muscle, she feels the power in her back, feels how her stomach muscles are sleek and soft at the same time. She feels the slope of her waist and curve of her hips, voluptuous and muscular. For a moment she rests in the completeness of her body. She hears him put down his book and shuffle down the hallway.

Oh God, he's been reading that Mick Jagger biography. Please let him be onto something else, anything. I can't take it if he sings "Brown Sugar" to me again.

Switching off the water, she steps out of the shower quickly and rubs herself hard with her towel. Leaning over, she reminds herself: Always toward the heart. In the steam of their tiny bathroom she begins to rub cocoa butter into her muscles. He might be tired, but she knows that the coffee smell of the butter and luster of her skin will excite him. Her muscles gleam; she knows how good she looks, glimmering in the half-darkness.

He wanders into the kitchen, looking for something to eat so he can wake up. She's showering, so that means she may want to have sex with him. It's hard to tell with these night classes, sometimes she's so relaxed, especially if she's done a group meditation, that she falls straight asleep, the impulse toward lovemaking lost. And on other nights he can feel her electric and sudden, as she walks into the house.

She's explained that if the energy in her body has been aligned, it's like being aligned with the Universe. As above, so below; as within, so without.

On those nights she just jumps on him. It's like encountering a force of nature. It's gratifying to know that she still matches and rises to what is in his heart.

He begins to think of her sleek body, her curves and hollows, and feels the ache rise in him. That familiar, sweet ache that throbs with a pulse of its own. You have school tomorrow, he reminds himself. His body throbs in answer. He grabs a banana, turns it to sweet creamy mush in his mouth, and thinks about the fact that they've been together through four different hairstyles of hers, a wedding in her family, a death in his, upset parents, supportive and intrusive friends, new cities, new lives -- and she's still with him. She still wants me, he wonders, shaking his head. Even though I'm still in school and have no money and no tangible idea what to do with my degree except this vague aim to make music. He grabs a couple of grapefruit from their bowl and his body throbs, his hands holding the memory of her breasts.

She's stretched out on the bed, her back sleek and muscled in the soft moonlight, glowing like a coffee bean, a touchpoint in the pale room. He stops in the doorway, dazzled and surprised, just looking at her in their warm-white room, surrounded by their soft pink sheets.

What had she called the colour of them? Sarasvati's breast. She'd told him that Sarasvati was the Indian Goddess of the arts, the mother of soul-invention, she is the air you breathe when seeking inspiration. He's suddenly hit by the smell of her. Oh God, the incredible smell of her. He remembers thinking how exotic she'd seemed when he first met her, and how he came to be embarrassed by that first impression. She was so much more that somehow that tiny word, exotic, made his understanding of her smaller. It made him realize how small he was, how small his life and experience had been up until that moment.

"Hey." His voice reaches out and caresses her shoulder.

She raises herself on one elbow and turns over, her dark gleaming face surrounded by the band of white flowers tucked into her afro-pouf, smiling up at him.

It's hard to take her in, even now. It's as though she's always moving, even when still. She can be sitting right in front of him and he gets only an impression of her. Glimpses come, sudden and startling as though she's paused just for him to grasp her, but just as quickly she's glimmering and moving again.

"Hey yourself," she says. "Whatcha got there?"

He smiles, his heart-cracking smile, and she shudders as he pierces the skin of one of the grapefruit with his thumb, the musky citrus smell biting her nostrils. He sits on the edge of the bed, ripping each fruit open, the pink, tropical innards uncovered, juicy and shining.

His concentration is endearing. She looks at his hard jaw and mediaeval face. He could be formed from warm stone, when the light hits him just right, as it does now. The human reminder is his blonde hair in its mussed-forward way, which warms her heart. She can see the little boy he was and the man he will grow into. His eyes flicker across her face and then drop again to the fruit in his hands. She examines the rose petal delicacy of his ears and thinks of how he blushes. My man, so shy, who would have thought?

"Good night?" He asks.

"Yeah." She runs her hand up his shirt, exploring his chest. She half closes her eyes, remembering how the shocking softness of his skin over muscle and bone, angular and hard, had excited her when they first met.

He feeds her grapefruit, the tangy sweet slickness filling her mouth. She closes her eyes and sucks the juice out before swallowing. They rest together, cupped in Sarasvati's loving hands, cocooned in moonlight, and he rips off sections, sucking the juice greedily.

As he feeds her, she makes sure to touch his fingers with her tongue and teeth. He sticks the last piece half in his mouth, his blue eyes twinkling at her. She laughs and rises, reaching for it. He tilts his head back so she has to move closer. She reaches for it with her mouth and they are encircled in a kiss and the juice reaches every corner of their mouths, mixing with their saliva and excitement, and they kiss, swallowing, breathing each other in. The hunger for each other as strong as their craving for grapefruit.

She tenderly lifts his shirt over his head. Still kissing her face, its dark heart upturned to the pale glow of his, he wriggles out of his underwear. Kneeling on their bed, he lifts her onto his lap.

Her breath gets longer and deeper, more languid as they kiss; she emits little cries and little sighs, and he moans softly as they breathe each other in. Their mouths full, tangy, and sweet with citrus and the other's tongue. He could disappear into her, in this moonlight, she is so dark. He cups her small soft breasts and wonders at her midnight nipples. It is as if, in her nooks and crannies, she disappears into herself. Self-creating, self-renewing, he thinks.

She shudders as he softly says, oh, and kisses her breasts, her chest, her collarbones, her neck.

She kisses his shy ears and he sobs a little.

What is it about happiness, she wonders, that makes us cry?

She feels the familiar overwhelming, the sweetness, the resistance even, until she opens and meets him, her breath saying, Oh again! Oh love! Oh more! She buries her fingers in his moon-blonde hair and her heart breaks open, flooding and crooning and sighing in celebration and appreciation and creation and destruction, and she kisses him harder and longer and gentler and softer.

Let him know how much space there is in my heart, let him know how wide it's been opened. And she prays to Sarasvati, and Venus too, for good measure, Please let him know.

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