January 2009

Constriction

The man-eating anaconda once held my heart.

Four times he caught it,

Swallowed it,

And watched it regenerate, cell by cell,

So he may chase it and catch it again.

Four times: Through longing,

Through beauty,

Through love,

And through tears.

Rapture filled my body as I watched it slowly travel,

Barely noticed by him,

Digesting downward through his body,

His long, powerful body.

It has constricted my chest

In both pleasure and pain

Until they became the same;

One in the sense that they felt exactly alike

Until tears made of Amazon rain fell downward,

Only to roll off his soft, smooth scales.

He only notices that the pressure has fallen and there is water in the air

But whenever his body was coiled around mine

(So warm, so safe, I was hidden in him)

I could tell he was listening, reading my breathing with the flickers of his tongue.

Though breathing was all I could do in his grasp.

I long for this in waking dreams,

Above all else to feel his soft, dark scales upon me again.

And it could have been more than that,

So much more than that.