Butterfly

Better than the sex, better than anything is her sitting up, with
her small bare feet on the floor and her back to me, reaching behind
fastening her bra, her shoulder blades angle poised, her arms bent at
the elbow, impossible, hard fleshy butterfly wings made of bone and
thin skin.

Watching her, she is already gone; I am already thinking that this -
the few brief seconds it takes to cover her tits - is what I will
remember later. It won't be the months of wondering, the hours spent
ruminating over casual throwaway comments. Did I read what she said in
the right way? Did she mean me to take what she said in a certain
light? Was I over thinking everything? It won't be the long night in
the crowded bar, the stilted conversation, the happy drinking, the
stifling club, the stray accidental touches that could be nothing or
something or nothing and something. It won't be the stupid first kiss,
front teeth clacking as she ducked into a cab with her housemate, and
it won't be the awful hours of wakefulness that followed, debating
whether the kiss was a kiss off. I'll forget the awkwardness at work,
the both of us staring into empty cups waiting for the kettle to boil -
my adding milk before hot water, you saying boys always do that, me
saying boys with a question mark and you not saying anything. I won't
dwell on the emails that said nothing and the emails that said
something and the emails that lead through the wood to Grandma's House.
I won't linger around the fact that this morning I had no idea today
would turn out the way it has. In the first instance I won't dwell
longer than is necessary upon your white shirt and your brown skin. The
delight of buttons - the intoxicating ease with which my fingers
undressed you - and zips, the sound your skirt made as it slipped to
the floor between us. I will not tarry by your elegant grace (the way
you stepped out of your discarded skirt and your shoes as one), I will
not dawdle over the warm brown taste of your skin, nor the heat of you.
I will not dilly-dally in the shadow of your immediate nakedness (your
breasts larger than I expected, your nipples smaller, the sweet
loveliness of a freckle on your tummy). Neither will I trifle with the
determined way in which your nipple grew hard in my mouth or feel again
surprise with your quick and easy movements beneath me, your legs
slipping above and around my own pulling me deeper inside you (although
I suspect the moan that greeted my being deeper inside you will detain
me for a moment, the tense expulsion of sound from your mouth catching
me like a hook, already with the hooks, your skin into mine). I will
not potter in the minutes that followed, or idle in the push-me,
pull-you of our collective desire, your small arse in my hands, you
atop, a palm flat against my chest hissing between your teeth like some
beautiful snake. Us. Busy us. All lips and tongues and fingers and
teeth. The feast.

No. I shall clutch the evening light to my mouth like a ripe plum and
think we have fucked for the first time and it is not yet dark. I will
drink the outline of your body, sat still, gazing out of the window as
you say I can't believe we didn't close the curtains. It is all one
with your dressing. You sit and reach from the bed to the floor,
freeing your bra from where it is snagged through the arms of a white
shirt, and dress - and, as you dress, you transform, from a face in the
crowd, a body in the office, to a butterfly, a kind of butterfly,
desiring to fly with arms instead of wings and foolish, too. It is a
brief half second of madness and were you to break it down, it is the
furthest thing from beautiful and yet it is not too.