Big Little Wolf's Daily Plate of Crazy

There is a dab of Chanel between my breasts.

Yes. Come closer.

I have poured myself a drink and spread myself out, on top of the bed covers, propped against red pillows in all this turbulence. Sleeplessness tangles sheets and twists blankets. As for the rest of the room, it is chaotic and I have only my excuses, surveying each table and dresser, each chair and the floor. Everything is spilling over with too much, and not enough of what is essential.

Outside, the wind asserts its dominance. It howls and releases. Limbs bend and leaves are ripped off their stems, whirling then scattering as branches scrape against my windows. Sunlight holds its own against shadow, flaunting its impermanence and renewal. Nature in all her hubris is glorious. And she knows it.

Yes. Come closer.

* * *

I take another sip. So we may drift together in the black brew of fire and permissiveness, its jolts and fingertips, only a little dangerous, only moderately electric, only the crackle and buzz as I stretch my legs out and point, reminding myself there is still movement and control. There are still parts that sustain their beauty.

And now, what is not mine: I am waiting and my eyes are closed, my pulse points perfumed, my blindness, a willing companion so I may persist in the life I do not lead, though these memories are real. Perhaps some are real and others, only the splint of this alcohol that distorts recollection. But there are objects, and I can touch them, even in this life I do not lead.

I wear the little black slip, the one found near rue des Archives, and the light jacket that covers the arms with a gossamer fabric, chocolaty, its draping following the curves of my breasts and my waist and my hips. I am covered and uncovered. We are never required to bare all. We only need our minds, ready to spin sugar into burning.

Yes. These aromas are infused with spice and heat.

* * *

I have the trappings for the life I do not lead, the life imagined, the life once tasted, the life in another time and another place – and I suspect it is Paris. Paris where I own my certainties and my illusions and know the difference, Paris where I have been content, opened, cultivated, jostled, reduced, polished, reconstructed, and shuffled into a fitting and unfitting mosaic in the making, always in the making, atoms and molecules, reconfiguring.

Now there is this fiery drink, and it is atoms and molecules, reconfiguring. It is dark and sweet and more dangerous than it lets on.

Your voice is lavish and will not leave me. There are remnants of luxury, an entirety of us, nine pages in a loose-leaf binder, hardly a beginning, still no ending. Perhaps, the telling of an imagined tale, an image that refuses to shatter. You are glass, a hard confection to be melted on my palate.

* * *

I have the trappings of another life: dresses and shoes, scarves and gloves, earrings and bracelets, paintings and books, yes books more than anything a richesse of books.

I have the trappings of another life: manners and mannerisms, the transformation of speech that turns on with the flick of a switch, that flows from my adaptive self, my chameleon self, the survivor, the dreamer, the woman who will live elsewhere without knowing the exact address, without names although those, too, I possess, and more than a few. Here, here in the depths of imagination, here in the life I do not lead, here where hunger swells and rarely diminishes, here you enchant me. You are smoke and invention.

It is hotter now, and I could blame it on drink but know it for what it is: desire. You opened the window. Your arm is heavy on my small frame as you sleep, but I will not wake you or ask you to move it. I want the moment, though its weight may numb my body. There are other rooms to furnish in another flat. But I have only this clarity. Only this heat.

* * *

I sip fire and want more. There is no more.

I need another source, a stronger source, an infinite source, shared, so I may pour out a sweet excess and offer you a home: the avid, famished, insolent, impudent, insistent, tender, docile, remote, proximate tip of flesh and spirit. And then another. Each dipped into the glass of drink, born of thirst.

This is the life I do not lead.

* * *

In this life I do not lead I nonetheless take inventory – un stockage de tout – china and crystal in the armoire, silver from my grandmother, etched florals on cordial glasses for after dinner port. These are trappings and mementos, objects that honor memory and I am the designated caretaker. But there is so much that it oppresses, and pins me down.

There are books, and I allow their continuing entry. If only I could sprawl on this bed and read them all, as you keep me company, memorizing my lines with your eyes on me and your palm on me as we abandon everything but this: words, and the undocumented spirit, birthed and swaddled, trussed and unleashed, here for intimate gatherings of poets and writers, here for painters and photographers, here for artisans and shamans, here wherever “here” may find us; it was the dream for each of us once, separately, and rekindled.

It is the dream, to navigate currents in the vein of healers and angels, recipients of gaping, braided, holy, uniquely winged hearts.

In this life I do not lead I am the conservator for volumes on shelves and in stacks; they lend their structure to each corner in each room where they stand, teeter, tower, and proud in their imperfect bodies, so human in their lean pillars and spirals, books and more books for opening and pointing to passages, for the volupté of their papers and inks and ideas, their sparks of possibility. And now we are deep into the drink together, deep into my truest faith where you will find my sweetest sex: this, the life I do not lead, this cerebral and sensory script, this word-sex that punctuates our pauses, your lapses in speech as now our breathing hitches and stops, alternates its patterns of scratching and teasing and easing off.

I feel you pressing on me again too heavily, your voice undermining my resolve and dancing in me at the same time, yes, to the moon that darts from behind the clouds, yes to the moan that cannot be stifled, yes to the shudder that lingers in our newest alphabet, yes to the unidentifiable letters strung along a glittering line, yes as you begin again, and again I sip, and you whisper, and you press your salty mouth to my wrist, its kiss seeded and flourishing and on to my forearm, to my shoulder, to the nape of my neck, to my lips, dipping and meandering with your own famished tongue, ribbons loosening their satin, time evaporating in this sumptuous sinking into interiors, long circles of sound and silence, opening and tightening, closer now, closer, here in this crisp and crackling splendor, in this permeating flood of heat, here…  here in this life I do not lead.

* * *

I offer you this: the lair, the echo, the unread passage. I do not want a palace and you know it, only space enough for a selection of objects with which we may entertain. There are friends to welcome into conversation, so perhaps it is a palace after all but not of square footage, and not of pretension. Here, you offer variation on the drink, red and more than red, the texture of your skin, your long limbs, your fur-covered chest where I may bury my face for hours and I cannot tell where lovemaking begins and stories end because lovemaking forgets its table of contents and burns its coda, and lovemaking is not sex. But this is sex and lovemaking, storytelling and lovemaking, and something else that requires no parts of speech.

Here there are no answers and no questions.

Here there is the plenitude of nine pages with scribbled notes that came before, and occasional notes that come after.

Here I would entice you to come again but I wait for another; he has possessions of his own, sorcery and syllables and no need of confession because together and apart we have nothing to confess and no shred of regret; we spill into each other in the life I lead and the life you lead, and I know myself for who I am: the vessel that yields and expands, receptacle for wine and slumber, once drenched in the work of everything, in the torpor of mid-summer and the window opened as you sleep, appropriating strength again to wake, to smile, and begin again.

You roll onto your back. You sit up. You offer me another sip of dark drink on your morning tongue and I will not say no to any of your flavors.

Here, even as you know I am waiting, here in the jumble of mess and books, here you extend one last reading and I am reminded that my fingers are crafted for Braille, my tongue for Braille, my breasts and my sex for Braille to read you over and over and one last time. You remind me that Braille was French and I laugh and say of course, and recognize you again – sorcerer, playmate, scholar, instructor, friend, lover, friend perhaps most of all; lover who graces nine pages, lover who must say goodbye, lover who whispers come closer and we burrow inside our hard, bright blindness, each a bride for the other, a bride to face the rising sun, a bride to worship yes and accept goodbye.

* * *

In this life I do not lead there are poppies.

In this life I do not lead I refashion landscapes.

In this life I do not lead, we bathe together and drink together and shed disguises. We abandon inventories and brave the hand without its pen. Instead, we store sensation in the barrels of the body, in cells and singing.

I close my eyes and sip, my eyes bound to the lover’s blindfold of belief, your words lapping me, assembled to recreate me in your turn, here as I imagine you, here pooling and breathless, here as I stumble to architect whatever is necessary to persevere, here in the trappings of a life I do not lead, here in the selves I hasten to pin and nail together into something that functions: a backbone erected to stand and fight, vertebrae fused to retain a form that bends to survive, bends like the limbs assaulted by the howling wind, bends because I am a supple form, bends because I pray to trial by fire, and fire by drink, and the fire of your mouth, my limbs losing force and cradled only by the secrets of these red pillows as I recreate the life I lead from the life I do not lead.

And still, I whisper.

Yes, come closer.

© D A Wolf

Big Little Wolf’s Daily Plate of Crazy

Tags: biglittlewolf, biglittlewolf en français, blog bilingue, complete ramble, daily plate of crazy, dailyplateofcrazy, du vin, érotisme, fantasmes adultes, half drunk, half-drunk challenge, le vin pour une vie sexuelle épanouie, Sex, sexe, writing, Writing Under the Influence