mind, throat, heart, gut (Patreon)

When I wake I feel myself breathing. I wake and walk upwards. Up the sheet covered ice mountain that is just outside my door. Grabbing branch and rock to steady myself with my hands as my feet slip and slide and my knees hit the ground beneath me. Each bang reminds me of a pain in my heart. I remember the meditation this morning; holding my mind, then my throat, then my heart, then my gut.

Memory collides with ice collides with skin.

I ache for all the things unsaid. I remember all the times I screamed. And the times I should have but I didn’t. I remember the loss for words and the times I found them. The times when I lost my voice hurt the hardest. Why didn’t I speak with her. Why didn’t I speak for them. Call him. Tell her. Sing with them.

Another slip and I fall a few feet down the mountain. I grab a tree trunk and wrap myself around it. Pull myself tightly to it, lay my cheek to rest there for a moment. And I remember all the places my cheek has been held. Tree and grass and ocean, yes. But hand and cheek and thigh, more.

I close my eyes against the trunk of the tree and I imagine his warm skin on mine. His fingertips slide up tickling the skin around my eye. His palm flat against my face. Turning in, I kiss him. Turning out, I look up at him. He is looking away. I remember all the times I hurt and wondered silently if he did too. I want to stay there on that tree forever. Hold me. Don’t let me go. Does the tree feel the same? Or are they ready for another human to let go, to just stop using them, to stop being taken from and instead want to be given to. Is that what he felt too, the week before he left? He wanted to be given to. And I just kept taking and asking for more. Wanting and expecting more. My cheek finding my way to his hands, his thighs, his cheeks more often than he would like.

But did I give to him the same way? I didn’t. And I use the excuse that he didn’t ask, he didn’t voice what he wanted, never showed me what he needed. But there were times when I knew. I KNEW and I still didn’t. Couldn’t. Wouldn’t.

I force myself away from the trunk. Palms pushing upward. Push myself to climb and climb. Think and feel. The wind, the ground. My heart, my sadness. My mind, my confusion. My gut, my distress and desires. My throat, my screams.

I make a mess of myself the way I do when I need a release. Covered in mud or blood. Pee myself screaming on the floor. Throw clay all over me while moaning through a nightmare. I make a mess of myself. Turn inward this time. Cover myself in dreams and hate and so much desire. Dreaming of being covered in wax, a cocoon of wax. Dreaming of ropes and ties and the release that comes from no control in that way.

Leaning more and more into kink, the way H talked about it, what I was for them. How it made them feel. The art form of it. Spending two hours intimately with another person creating together, creating out of each other, creating with bodies together.

All this play is, is play. It’s simply play. It’s the lack of judgment like when we were toddlers playing and imagining together. Creating worlds together.

I move and run through the forrest thinking like this. Imagining and building worlds in my head. Day dreaming about when and how it will become a reality.

I met H the way I never usually meet anyone, sober, in a cafe. They explained how they only meet like that. The sharp comparison to those wanting to meet in cars in parking lots at night or alone in a forrest. The social anxiety that comes with meeting someone in such a public space but the knowing that this is how I want it to be done. Trust doesn’t need to be “earned” so to say, but a feeling of safety will build over time.

And the way they talked about kink, and play - so different than anyone else. How special and sacred it is to them. How absolutely important it is to them that consent is given under such strict circumstances. Bringing nothing out until the other person fully knows they want that thing. Not questioning, not consent given in an adrenaline excitement, but the acronym they gave FRIESS consent is freely given, revocable, enthusiastic, sober, and specific.