a note to my lover

if i weren’t afraid of being sappy, i would tell you about how i feel right now. the mellow, slow swirling of your energy still moving all through my limbs and torso and pelvis. the way i still feel your delightful skin touching every inch of me. how delicious it felt to slide my naked body up against your sleeping warmth after my shower this morning, and how deeply loved i feel by you. 

vulnerability is my greatest strength and weakness. you receive my love so beautifully. trusting you to not use this to your own ends, as so many have done (wittingly and unwittingly), feels alternately elating and terrifying. but i have chosen to make trust and vulnerability a practice. and i have chosen you. 

i have chosen you.

xoxo

poly-what?

i have two lovers. i see them both regularly. i love and am loved by them both. they are both interesting, intelligent, loving, creative people and are very dear to me. they offer me similarly delightful yet entirely unique experiences of being loved and nurtured. my heart overflows with gratitude for each of them every day. i have rarely, if ever in my life, felt such bountiful love, pleasure, and delight. i feel like the luckiest woman alive.

this experience is also very challenging. i am not so keen these days on labeling myself, and don’t prefer the varying “poly” labels that many use to define their love/life choices. i don’t feel i owe an explanation to anyone, but as there is a tendency to assume that unconventional choices warrant explanation, i generally don’t share this part of my life. i have to remember which love i told which people about to minimize questions. i am getting better at being cagey.

i am meeting more and more people like me. people who reject conventional models of relating and are interested in moving into new ways of being. as we see the old models breaking down, it seems natural to me to reach for something different, something that suites us better. with the vast array of human diversity, everyone wanting (or needing) the same model of relationship is as unlikely as everyone having precisely the same nose, or experiencing music in exactly the same way. there is far too much (beautiful!) inherent variety within our species to ever achieve organic similitude.

daunting a task as it is to break down our social programming, i do believe it is key to being a happy and self-actualized person in this world. and considering the precarious state our world is in today, on so many levels, it is perhaps more critical to survival than ever before, to continuously and gently question our foundational values and beliefs, holding them with compassion and letting them go if they are no longer serving us.

unbreakable

fuck me until i break
until your mouth 
inhales my screams
and this emptiness inside of me
folds in on itself

fuck me like you don’t care
like i have the strength 
of a thousand goddesses
like i am 
unbreakable

fuck me.
throw me.
restrain me.
slap me.
put me where you 
want me
and take me.

take me.
for all the times i said no
for all the moments my voice was silenced
for each lewd look and whistle
for all the power that was taken from me
and for the darkness inside of me…

this time i speak 
and you hear me.

this time
i say yes.

la petite mort

[quote from wikipedia]
La petite mort, French for “the little death”, is an idiom and euphemism for orgasm. This term has generally been interpreted to describe the post-orgasmic state of unconsciousness that some people have after having some sexual experiences.

More widely, it can refer to the spiritual release that comes with orgasm or to a short period of melancholy or transcendence as a result of the expenditure of the “life force,” the feeling which is caused by the release of oxytocin in the brain after the occurrence of orgasm.

i have been captivated by this term/phrasing for orgasm since i first learned of it. i think this is so perfectly on point… capturing the complexity of the varying emotions that give meaning to our unique experience of orgasm… the seemingly impossible combination of utter loss and ecstasy that i feel each time i come.

trembling over my skin
coursing through my blood
my cries quivering, hovering…

you send rushes of sensation
up and down my spine
my body yearns, demands to burst out of its casings
releasing this vast ocean of energy,
soaring through the sky…

then laying softly, quietly
skin against skin
our breath intermingling
floating in the creative wonder
of this love

partition

this video is a lovely fantasy vision. beyoncé’s latest video album brings up sexuality in many different ways, and i was immediately in love. in one of her videos discussing making “partition” she talks about her experience turning one of her fantasies into a video, how it felt pushing her limits of expressing her sexuality publicly. i think it takes a lot of courage, and i think b did it with a lot of grace and beauty.

well done, bey. <3

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZ12_E5R3qc&w=560&h=315])

regarding vulnerability

vulnerability is frightening. the feelings of allowing and letting go that are necessary preludes to giving in to vulnerability feel counter-cultural. letting go means anything might happen. it involves trusting ourselves and holding space for anything that arises. we are afraid of our own shadows, what so-called dark desires and impulses might lie beneath our shiny veneers.

each time i post on this blog i feel afraid. even posting anonymously, i feel fears of rejection, old self-shaming responses, massive questioning of putting my raw words out on the internet for anyone and the nsa to read, fear of being a “bad” writer, of being laughed at… of being as insignificant and silly as my inner critic has always told me i am.

fuck it. i dare greatly now. i work each day to be gently courageous in all i do. to take myself seriously enough to put my words out, and with enough humor and self-love to accept my imperfections as part of the beauty of who i am, to love and take pride in all my creative output, silly and insignificant though it may sometimes be.

dare greatly today. how can we better celebrate and show our gratitude for this amazing adventure of life?