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{butterfly} jonathan bitz It is morning. Not mourning. Waking, naked and in her high bed and I know, this is my new beginning. This is where everything, absolutely everything, begins anew. In her bed the soft light of this new day is the music that fills up the space between us. Somehow now, everything has become a symbol. A cymbal. Loud and full of sound. Coming from my slow sleep, I have no clothes on and am as naked as I have ever been. The girl is sleeping and I am watching her chest; that space between her clavicles is rising and falling and I lose myself in the idea that I am watching her heart beat. But instead of a drumbeat I see a waveform undulating in that soft place, just as our great seas do. + …I am learning as we go… Days later and I come to find that this space between the clavicles, where I watch her heart breathe, does have a name. It is called the suprasternal notch and it has long been thought to be a place of understated eroticism. Unlike a girl’s legs, or chest, it takes a longer eye to reach this place where I watch her lifeforce beat. For something so revealing, we should have a name for it. Not suprasternal notch. A notch refers to an indentation. A space created because of an act of removal. “Notch” does not indicate that this place is the space, the window through which I am able to see so far inside. Of her. Then, I remember the pendant that she wears, the one that hovers over this secret place at the base of her neck, the one that is a symbol for so much. Her pendant is gold and flutters over her suprasternal notch. The pendant is a butterfly. A gold cymbal, loud with meaning: The Butterfly. In the quiet of this morning, as the girl sleeps silently, and I think that I am watching something holy. This is how I am learning: slowly. And only now, thousands of heavy breaths later, does it make perfect sense and alas, this perfect place has a name: Her Butterfly. + The girl is below, looking up at me with her cosmic eyes. I am on top of her, kissing her neck, taking bites with my lips. When I kiss her clavicles I pull away and watch the wet glimmer dry under my breath. My fingers prod and push at her fleshy parts. Then, in this sober sun, I slide myself slowly inside her slick heat. We both inhale strongly. As if we are just now learning how to breathe for the first time. A wave undulates through me, reaches my head and then I push it back to her in the place where we are connected. And while only part of me is inside of her, and while – in this beginning – it may feel as though it is only my sex that has penetrated her: everything I have is inside of her now. Moving strongly but slowly in and out of her and, I am not thinking. I am feeling: This is the only representation I have that can illustrate the one gift that I desperately want to give her: everything. The way she presses back into me, continuing this swelling wave of force and life and breath – and I know that I am being given absolutely everything that she has. + Rolling playfully around and touching and kissing in the good morning she asked me if I have ever traded breath with another, through my mouth. A symbiotic kind of CPR. Her speckled eyes watched my lips as she asked. Careful she is in her words, as if, implicit in this offering is the idea that, by releasing her breath into my body – she knows that it will somehow heal me. That it will fill the voids that I have grown like empty galaxies. Now, I have done many things physical and emotional and even tested myself intellectually – but I have never put my mouth on another’s and offered my breath; and conversely taken hers. Only inadvertently, through a kiss, have I ever inhaled somebody else’s life wind. What I don’t tell her is that I am desperate for her and her lifeforce. I want to touch it, know it and yes: have it heal me. I am not afraid of being this naked. Before her and I am less than the skin that masks everything inside of me. I am not afraid of the power outstretched between our two naked, birthing bodies. I am not afraid of what is growing between us. I am not afraid… I want her with every sad and powerfully sophisticated molecule in my body. And I know that it’s right before me, because this is how she kisses me: strongly as though she means it. + I push myself up so that only my sex is touching hers. Once deep inside and I place my mouth on hers. With my arched back, we create a circle. Between us is a center. Gently I breathe into her, offering her a sample of my breath, as a punctuation to this circle of love and lust and life. …as the beginning of all that she will give to me, and I, to her. + …I was lost, but now I’m found… I knew from the very beginning that I wanted to love her. From the very beginning. The orgasm that is welling-up in me comes from that place where: If love is god, she is my goddess. But because love is not possession, she is the goddess. For the first couple of times with our naked bodies now and I have been terrified to let my body go, to let it quake and tremble and stand in that state where a sneeze leaves you – where the demons can attack: at the height of supreme vulnerability. But as we have stepped forward in our uneven gait, I feel her catching up to me and these developed boils of emotion. The night before, she told as much and on this morning I can feel it. I can feel her moving closer. To me. To us. And as our bodies heave together, I can feel her beginning to move with me. And, I begin, alas, to truly dance with her. Without stepping on her toes. Without stumbling. …finally, the words are coming-out right… + My breath quivers like a Butterfly’s flapping wings when I am inside of her as if I want to shout everything out loud in some spoken word; in some great and lasting oration – one that will define everything for all lifetimes to come. But instead of words, just heavy breath shoots from me. Our bodies sounding together as that lexicon in which I am slowly learning our new language. I suck on her neck, reaching for her arteries. I take whole mouthfuls of her skin between my lips in one of the most elegant and protracted fits of sensual ferocity I have ever felt. The sensation, welling and spilling over the top and out towards her, did not start in my chest, or gut – but even lower, in my thighs and calves. My toes. From my very bottom, upward. From that place where my gut meets my soul. The heat floods me, then falls. And I know: I am going to come. To her. Because of her. For her. Running my moist lips up and down her neck, I pull away and watch her Butterfly quivering and flying and floating through the morning light between us. Her Butterfly is beating its wings at the pace of her heart and this breath and the new life and our lust and unflinching love all combined. And then, as if it came from whole lifetimes behind me – my orgasm comes. With a slow strength it pulses from the very bottom beneath my feet, upward. From that place where my gut meets my soul. And with the power of every breath taken – from every Everest I have climbed and fallen from, part of my lifeforce flutters from me. As an offering. As a breath. As a golden Butterfly loud with sound like all the other cymbals that this beautiful girl and I are alternately building and sharing and watching grow between us. |
