Once you've spent years
unclothed,
unsheathed,
unhinged,
walking to the kitchen and back,
butt naked,
gone from cooking meals
to doing the dishes
to lying on the bed
staring at the ceiling
for no reason at all,
not a shred of fabric
between your skin
and hers,
you realise
how easily
people have peddled
sex for salvation,
mistaken
intercourse
for intimacy.
You wake up
to the quiet truth
that waking up
to bare bottoms
and open tops
was never,
by itself,
reason enough
to fuck.
Those who believe otherwise
are still learning
the difference
between access
and affection.
Because novelty
has an expiry date.
Tenderness doesn't.
Need
arrives
like a clock hand,
faithfully returning
to where it began.
Desire,
however,
has always been
a visitor.
It knocks.
It waits.
It is invited in.
You realise
the blemishes on her buttocks
resemble spines drawn on sand,
as if finger impressions
left by
the undercurrents of the ocean
beneath and beyond,
the singular mole
at the south-western edge
of her left breast
resembles an island
still fighting
to stay above water,
how somehow,
even after years,
your breath
against her neck
still creates
a geography
of goosebumps.
You realise
intimacy was never
about two bodies
finding each other.
Bodies have always
known how to collide.
It was about two histories
learning
how to inhabit
the same silence.
Two people
shedding clothes
is easy.
Two people
losing disguises,
revealing everything
they spend years
pretending not to be,
takes a long time.
Long enough
for ordinary
to become sacred.
Long enough
for belonging
to stop needing
proof.
Sex is never finished
when the body is.
It continues
in the certainty
that tomorrow
you will still
walk naked
to the kitchen,
still steal from each other's plates,
still discover
new maps
on familiar skin.
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