TheBanyanTree: Senses

[Monique Young]

How well can we know someone without knowing their smell, their taste, how
they feel? What does your skin feel like under my fingers, next to me, your
legs wrapped around mine as we sleep, your arm thrown across me? I breathe
you in, the smell of you, I taste you, your clean fresh scent, your own
particular you. It is these things that give me you. I see you and it
invokes a response in me that I cannot name. I hear your voice, and it is
the same. I like even to hear your recorded message on your voicemail
because it is you, it is your voice, and it makes me smile.



           I feel you next to me, your hand in mine, I curl up next to you,
I lean against you or you lean against me, I feel your head with my hand,
the baldness, shaved so clean or a short stubble when you haven't shaved it,
and it doesn't matter to me which it is, only that I can feel you. When I
lay with my head on your lap while we want TV you brush my hair back from my
face, your hand soft against my skin, so gentle with me, and I smile with
the feel of it.



            You are warm and gentle, careful with me, careful with what I
represent to you. Life's connections are often tenuous, even our connections
with life itself, but our connection feels concrete, set in stone, no matter
what tomorrow may bring. We have no way of knowing what may happen tomorrow,
or the next day, or next week, especially not into the months ahead, but you
will be with me always in one form or another.



            The scent of you, the taste of you, the feel of you, all deeper
than the surface, all giving me more of you than I could have just by seeing
you or hearing you. The taste of you, so sweet, the feel of you, the scent
of you. While you sleep I breathe you in, and I sleep better having done so.
I curl up next to you just because I can, because you let me, because your
closeness represents more than you know. The feel of you, the scent of you,
the taste of you, the sound of your breath while you sleep, and I see you
there next to me, and I know I am fortunate. What happens next cannot be
known, but that's as it should be. What matters is now, what matters is what
we do with what is now, and tomorrow will take care of itself.



Macadamia