Illiterations: Laughing At My Own Expense

  I will remember you.  All the things that lead us   To that moment in my life That broke old shackles;   That started new patterns; That awoke the sleeping wolf. We do not need promises. Your gift to me was that moment. Your gift to me was  everything that led to that moment. I look at you and feel alive,    In a way I had been dead for years. You show me who you are,   I know this. I know our moment   was just that; a moment. And just as I have left   men with moments In my younger years,   I hold on to ours, now. You unchained the wolf. And she walks free, and proud, and ready. -- Nico Holmes

The moment--the surprising, amazing, moment--his lips brushed mine, I was transported by his tenderness.   How long had it really been since I had experienced tenderness alongside physical closeness? I didn't know and I was suddenly drunk on sweetness; appreciation; gentleness; and feeling wanted. Tenderness crashed in on me.  And as I write, I realize that feels like an oxymoron because how could tenderness be crashing if it's tender? And yet so much like the void of a vacuum; of a black hole in space; the absence of something is static until the presence of that same thing comes thundering in and suddenly it is a roaring revelation of understanding and feeling. And at each step into the moments past that kiss, tenderness came first. Tenderness was all of it but not only it. It was everything I had almost forgotten I needed; it was nothing I had had in so many years.