blistered lips

because she must
and the world is not parenthesized
never small at all
and her heart is even bigger
than any of it
or you or me

even yesterday
when she lived in the cup of your hand
with your bantam voice
the tablature of her days
the sway blessing
was upon her

and then this moment
while she sleeps in the cramp of your bruise
god gives you this: that
love is a circle and absolute
and so she binds you
now and always

ever tomorrow
and a thousand tomorrows redeemed
over and over
to lose what we gain, gain what we lose
and so love gives us
all that we are

because she must
because she’s blessed
because she knows
because she loves

there she goes
see her jumping the brilliant rainbow?
little girl in a hurry

….you might as well drop your panties and spread your legs. Because, sooner or later, he is going to have his way with you.

Last night, after a busy day of “much ado about nothing,” I was wired-tired. You’ve been there, right? Feeling all day like your left foot was nailed to the floor as your right one kept running you around in endless circles? Yeah, one of those days. So I was really ready to call it quits. Fresh from a hot bath I was looking forward to calling it a night and had been about the business of doing just that when my muse showed up.

“Not tonight, dear,” I told him. “I have a headache.”

But he was having none of it. Hopping up onto my shoulder, he pulled out his teeny-tiny muse-monkey and began spanking it. Not this time, I thought to myself, determined to ignore his lewd, rhythmic keystrokes—right there, beside my ear.

“You know you want it, Angela,” he whispered.

“No. No I don’t, Muse. Please go away.”

I looked longingly at the just-poured glass of merlot sitting on the kitchen countertop only a few steps away. I imagined the beautifully-bound anniversary edition of To Kill a Mockingbird awaiting me just down the hall—perched atop the pillows I’d just fluffed. I thought of the bedside lamp, its amber nimbus waiting to surround me in the sweetest of solitudes as I sank into my pillow to sip my wine and read a page or two of Harper Lee’s masterpiece before drifting off to higher ground.

“Go to your keyboard, Angela.”

Muse’s voice had taken on that sexy growl, the seductive tenor that always makes my little slut-digits quiver. I whimpered. He chuckled—that familiar sleazy snarl of a chuckle. Oh, how I hate you, you insatiable bastard. As if he could read my thoughts, Muse grunted, spit a gob of ink on his little quill and stroked faster. We both watched the jetty fluid oozing from between his pumping fingers, smearing across his knuckles.

I was getting hot—hot to trot right over to my keyboard and writhe, I mean write. The raunchy little raconteur inside me began to tremble. I wanted Muse’s hot jizz to conjugate and punctuate and catenate me. And his grizzled sneer told me Muse knew it.

“Nouns, adverbs, adjectives.”

“Muse, please stop. You know that sentence is incomplete.”

“Then fix it, Angela. You know you can’t resist.” His breath, smelling of parchment and indigo, blew across my fevered face. “Get your panties off and get your horny fingers over to that fucking computer and diddle with that fragment.”

“But…”

“I know, baby. I’ll make it good. Remember the old days? When we did it on everything? Index cards, notebooks, legal pads, steno pads and even napkins. Remember how you liked being bent over that Underwood you found at the yard sale?”

“Okay, Muse. Damn it, you’re right. Do me. Bend me like a bitch over that keyboard and make me your whore. Shove that fragment in front of my face and have your way with me. Use me like the pencil-pushing slut (virgule) strumpet (virgule) tramp (virgule) harlot that I am.”

“I knew you’d give it up,” Muse sniggered as he positioned me in front of the computer. “Now, you filthy little ink-slinging Pandora, listen to this.”

Hunched over the keyboard I opened wide as he started pumping it into me: “Participles, linking verbs, superlative adjectives… You want more?”

“Give it to me, Muse. Give it to me fast and hard and dirty.”

“Grammar, punctuation, conjunctions, interjections, gerunds…”

“Oh, yes! That’s it. Do me. Pound it in to me.”

“Factitive verbs, predicate nominatives, indefinite pronouns, past participles, appositive phrases …”

Muse had me where he wanted me. He knew the dirty truth about the both of us: That I am his whore and he is my whoremonger. It’s been that way since I first picked up a pen. And so I wrote and I wrote and I wrote. Until his profane solicitations became the rhythmic movement of my sticky little fingers across the keyboard and once again, as he always does, the Muse had his way with me.

You’ve come to ask me why I am sitting here for well over an hour now and if there is anything you can do for me. You are so young. What, eighteen? Nineteen? And yet you are so kind.

Dear beautiful girl, there is nothing anyone can do for me. And I cannot leave this bench, because Diana expects that I stay here until she is done. Diana is my wife, you see; and I must never disobey her. Even when she is doing what I know she is doing in the hotel behind me, I do what she tells me to do.

Ahh. I see that you understand what is going on up there–that she is betraying me even as I sit here talking with you. Don’t look so shocked; or is that sadness I see? If so, there is no need to pity me. Sit here beside me and I will tell you more. Go ahead, I don’t bite. Hell, I don’t even bark. Although sometimes I whimper. That is what my Diana would tell you and she would be right.

Sit with me and I will share this bread with you, so that we can both feed the birds gathered at our feet. They know me now, and are here every Thursday. Every Thursday it’s the same: Me on this bench, the birds at my feet, and my wife in room 418.

Dear girl, even though you are too young to know of such things yet, your sweetness is appreciated. And so I will tell you. Diana would tell you that I am “pussy whipped.” She tells me so every day–every single day. She is right, of course. I was struck dumb by her beauty the first time I saw her and have been her captive ever since.

After three months of dating, I begged her to marry me. She was blunt. You cannot satisfy me. That is what she said. I told her that I loved her, that I would learn, that she could show me. Because, quite honestly, I knew she was none too pleased with our intimacies. She smiled then, gently taking my hand and looking deep into my eyes. I am fond of you and could easily love you. And I will marry you. But only if you agree to my terms.

Can you guess her terms? Surely your young mind has not yet comprehended such things, and so I will tell you. My beautiful Diana revealed to me that she’d been regularly seeing and having sexual relations with a variety of men throughout the three months we’d dated. You see, she told me, there are stud men and then there are husbands. If I agree to this marriage, you will be a husband. I will get my sex from my stud men. Because, quite frankly, I do not care to have intercourse with you ever again. Of course I was devastated. Like any man would, I told her those terms were unacceptable. She just smiled and kissed me on the cheek.

We continued seeing each other, but the dynamics had changed. No longer was I permitted to have sex with her. Needless to say, I was perpetually aroused, totally obsessed with her. It wasn’t long before she began freely admitting to her various ongoing dalliances. On more than one occasion–when we were at dinner or a movie–she’d point to a man she’d slept with the night before or recently.

While much of what then transpired from that point on is quite embarrassing, I promised to tell you. And so I will.

My obsession became everything. She was Laura to my Franceso. At first I followed her, needing to know who these men were, jealous that she would give to them what she would not give to me. But then I had to know what they were doing with her. I began hiding in the bushes, watching through Diana’s bedroom window as they took their pleasure with her beautiful, perfect body.

Of course, it was agony. But there was also a new kind of hunger–a voracious appetite that I could no longer deny. Because I was becoming aroused watching these men molest her body, taking her roughly, spilling their seed into her womb. There came a night when, disgusted with myself–but unable to stop–I unzipped my fly and grabbed my stiff member.

I see that you are blushing. Have I said too much? Do you want me to continue?

Ah, then, I will. Thank you. They say that confession is good for the soul; perhaps that is why I feel this deep need to tell you our story. Here, have some more bread. If you hold a piece down here–like this–some of the birds will come right up to your fingers. There you go.

As I was saying, I grabbed my own erect penis, right there outside of her window as I watched Diana on her on hands and knees with this man–this brute–pummeling her from behind. I watched the biggest penis I’d ever seen sliding in and out of her; and Diana loved it. She was screaming at him to do it even harder and deeper. Her flesh had taken on a pink glow, and a mist of sweat covered her bouncing breasts. Then her eyes rolled up, and she began grunting and screaming. Her body twitched and jerked. That she was having an orgasm with that huge organ inside of her small orifice drove me wild. Quite frankly, I’d never been so turned on.

I began stroking myself. One…two…three… And that is as far as I got. I began ejaculating into the bushes just as the man pulled out his penis–slimy and dripping with the evidence of my beloved’s orgasm–and began shooting his discharge all over her exquisite heart-shaped buttocks.

I was crouched behind the bush, catching my breath and wondering how I could creep away without being discovered, when Diana’s “stud man” quite abruptly emerged through the front door, tucking in his shirt. As I watched him getting into his car, he stopped and–looking back at the house–yelled an obsenity. I sent him away and he’s not too happy. It was Diana’s voice right above my head. I looked up to see her smiling down at me from the window.

Of course, I was mortified. It turned you on, didn’t it? I was so embarrassed, so confused–my sickened heart thudding against my chest–all I could do was stutter. Diana told me to come inside. Shaking, not knowing what was going to happen next, I went around to the front of the house. The door was still ajar from her lover’s quick departure, so I let myself in, going straight to Diana’s bedroom where I found her still naked, the overwhelming and pungent smell of sex filling the room.

So, you get one more chance to ask me to marry you. Just one more. And let me warn you, before you ask for my hand. Oh her smile was so confident when she said that. It will be just like tonight. And the other nights you were outside my window. I will have lovers, many lovers. You may watch or listen or wait. But you, yourself, will not have sex with me. The only thing that will be different is that you won’t have to hide behind a bush.

The rest of the story is obvious, my dear. I married her, agreeing to her harsh terms. It’s been seven years now. And while I sleep in the same bed with Diana every night–watching the rise and fall of her breasts, smelling the perfume of her shampooed hair, seeing the flair of her blanketed hips–I am never permitted to have intercourse with her. I cannot even count the number of men who’ve had sex with Diana.

Sometimes Diana and her “stud man” will let me stand with my face to the corner, listening and masturbating. Other times they might have me help them in the actual act–by positioning her or holding her open for him. Sometimes I must stay behind the closet door or under the bed.

But this is Thursday, Bench Warming Day, as Diana calls it. It’s been going on now for about three months. Look up there where the blind in the window is half open. That is room 418, and that is my cue. It tells me that they have had their fill. Five men have had sex with my wife. Five men have abused her body and used it for their pleasure. They have used and filled every opening.

So I must be going. Diana needs me. She will be depleted and tired. I will tenderly bathe her, and then dress her. Then carry her to the car. I will take her home and tuck her into bed. Because I love her. I love her so very much.