Under the Dark

by Kelly Loewen
March 28, 2003

Would I jump with fright or surprise when you touch me, or would I melt with hot hot heat and my eyes half closed like I'm secure in the warmth and wanting more? Or maybe I would do both.

Each time I see you I want to feel your ribs, each and everyone; I want to play them like the piano, and raise goosebumps on your pale flesh. I want to feel your spine like a snake, twisting and turning and hissing, each section a new hill for me to climb with my fingertips or my tongue.

Each time I walk past, and you smile and you look flushed even though you don't see me, I want to scream and scream until my voice goes away, and I don't even care if it's your name that I scream because it isn't a name or a yearning it's just an exclamation, like it's happened, it's finally happened and you looked, look at me! And sometimes you are distracted and I see the thoughts flickering across your face and I see that determination to find the elusive and I wonder if it can ever find me.

Each time you walk by me, my toes curl and my smile goes away and I lose my train of thought, not that it really has a destination. It is at home only in transient places, and you make it flee and hide itself, its grey face now blank. My hands clench into fists, my nails, if I forgot to trim them, bite into my palms and the edges of my hand, but never enough to bleed.

You aren't enough to bleed.

And you are gone, and I smile and laugh at my friends, and they are tired of asking me why, or I just talk to myself, incoherent babbling to ease the mind.

When the dark thoughts come from other sources, they always lead to dreadlocks abandoned, and an accent that hums under my radar. And then it seems as though I can't stretch enough, and I always need more, and the room is just too small, or too large, and I need need need something. Only the dark will help, only silence will soothe. Sleep don't claim me, because I cannot control you! I need control, my imagination is fertile and it will have to do.

Water can't replace you, though it burns over my skin. If I have that confidence, and I have that dance, it will lead someone to me, someone just a bit like you. And they will say that I am kind, or maybe I'm a bit exotic. I will toss my hair and it will shine like yellow light through red wine. I'll feel ordinary. But I'll slide the black slick smooth cloth all for a little twirl.