“Love Spelled Out in Woman”

I cling to her, hold her — a middle schooler — as if grasping for something to keep me from falling.
Each time I trace her body that seems distilled from pure nectar, each time I take it into my mouth, I am swallowed by a torrent of scalding water so intense I feel I might drown in it. My dignity and reason snap like the crude limbs of a scarecrow, and hang there, wrecked. That they never quite tear free — never quite vanish into the current — makes it all the more pitiful.
Self-reproach is pressed always against my forehead, and the faces of my family and the face before me drift through my field of vision at random. That a day would come when the faces of my beloved husband and daughter would feel like an intrusion — I had truly, not once, imagined it. It was entirely beyond the reach of my imagination. And yet here I was, having stepped off the edge of that unimaginable place, and fallen, and was still falling.
I catch the outstretched hand of a girl in middle school — the same age as my own daughter — and wind our fingers together, refusing to let her touch anyone else; and at that, the girl’s lips relax, as if reading my intent — as if mocking it. She knows: make enough of a fool of yourself reaching for her, and the girl will only want you more. She was right. The moment our mouths meet, the other’s tongue, cooler than mine, pushes past my lips, impatient, unable to wait. While the difference in temperature sends something like a shiver across my skin, that foreign tongue moves through me like a leisurely stroll. Growing conscious of the other’s face, so close, as her tongue wanders — I understand: every garden my life has ever cultivated is being withered away, and in its place, something unrecognisable is being put down to grow.
It sprouts in an instant, colours everything, changes even the shape of the sky, and transforms my inner landscape entirely.
That landscape held within it the rain falling endlessly over a forest — and yet it was blue. And beautiful.
When I wind my own tongue around the other’s as it moves to wander off and leave — as if pressing myself against it — a thick, viscous sound is born between us, and my cheeks burn. The sound of shameless desire cuts across the edge of my ear; by the time even that pain has dissolved away, it has already become pleasure. Our tongues seeking each other out — tenderly, almost pitifully so.
When the kiss ends, I cup a hand against her cheek — white as white, the kind that would hold a fingerprint — and feel, with relief, that it is properly flushed. Sensing something in the softening of my own face, the girl tries to look away, as if disliking that she has been seen through; I stop her with my other hand as well. Trapped with no choice but to face me directly, those eyes — as they have on countless occasions — pierce straight through me now too.
“You dirty old lady.”
Everything that has passed through me, compressed with uncanny precision into just that much.
“…You’re hardly one to talk, you little pervert.”
Even if I were to enumerate everything this girl has done to me and throw it back — this girl would only laugh, I’m sure.
“Lucky you. That I like someone like that.”
She emphasises the detachment deliberately, putting distance between herself and what she feels.
Always, always like this — only ever able to reach anything by going the long way around, in crooked, roundabout words.
This girl.
The depths of my stomach boil with it — how dear she is.
“You too… you only ever… want me…”
I brush hair from her forehead, lick away the sweat rising there, pull the body pressing down on me even closer.
Only ever want me.
Only me is enough.
No one else. Anyone but me — unnecessary.
Arms reach and draw me close, and breath is blown softly against my ear.
“Only you.”
That single reply bites into my ear. Hard, as if refusing to let go — not until it tears away.
I want to wreck her completely.
I want to hold her, gently, wrapped safe.
That love and desire can both burn so hot they sharpen to a point, and begin to take on the same shape — what irony is that.
I can, if it’s with you — what I felt when those words were spoken, I will never forget, not for the rest of my life.
To put it in commonplace terms: it was a blessing. And it was a curse.

If, in that moment, I had not — as naturally as breathing — let my maternal instincts show.
Perhaps none of this would have happened.