In Your Embrace, I Am Suddenly Awakened

To see you now, bare and drenched in moonlight, sweat winding like rivers across your skin, I feel blessed beyond all measure and belief. See, I have always been sustained by passion and intimacy, but lately I have been finding it difficult to form real connections. When I am approached, I feel distant and detached, and when I am spoken to, the words don’t seem to register. It is like I have been carrying around a vast empty void in my heart, where nobody quite matters enough to lead me to feel much of anything one way or another. Until you.

My need for you is formidable and vast. I crave you in such dark and indecent ways to speak them aloud would blacken my tongue. I intend to hear you breathless, to feel the urgency in your bones, to nourish a thirst that will not subside until your body is blushed red and blazing hot in my hands. Present me the bare and shallow of your neck, bite into your lips with the tips of your teeth. I have wandered so long without passion or purpose I had almost forgotten what it means to be present — to feel alive with a person, to share in their energy, to be vulnerable and raw and embrace every moment.

I have learned that exceptionally passionate kinds of love have the power to stir things long forgotten in you, and in your embrace I am suddenly awakened, I am captivated, I am the blackened shell of a cold dead star relit with new and purposeful light — your spirit and energy sinking down through the hollows and vast empty spaces past romances have left behind in my heart. Where once I was uninspired, insipid and worn, I now feel alive and on the roof of the Earth. I feel daring and bold, like somebody else, and I cannot express how significant a gift that is.

There is something about you that is twisted and thrilling—that moves me to live wilder and without reservation. I suddenly feel the urge to be rash and spontaneous, to get myself into trouble and travel to faraway places.

You are multitudes. A muse. A masterpiece. A magic thing. The single thing in all this existence that genuinely steals my breath away.

Thanks to you, I cling to the now instead of the past. I want to soar, act, thrive and prosper. I want to move, grow, flourish and further the boundaries of who I am and what I believe I can be. This is what you’ve nurtured in me. Conviction and confidence. Strength and stature. Determination and complete disregard for the insecurities and toxicity former loves have indoctrinated in me. I finally feel myself again. I finally feel free.

So come, come curl up into the nook of my neck. Feel my chest rise and ebb, my pulse slow and speed and stop. Lean into these bones, all of them yours. I want to rest with you here and preserve this moment. We will watch time swim on by without us. We will howl to the stars and sleep as the sun rises. I’d forgotten the good the right person can do, that I needn’t bear this weight on my own. Around you, I’m beginning to actually like who I am. And I don’t know how to express just how grateful I am for that.

So, gather your breath, fall back into the bed, and let these hands show you instead.