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v u l v a l i c i o u s Flower Petal Tornadoes, and the ability to control the tides of emotion. Maybe. I like these moments where I know things, where I can feel bits of what I want falling around me like the tiny pink-white petals from cherry blossom trees on a particularly windy spring day. The facts swirl around me slightly, confusing for a moment, until with perfect clarity I see the soft flower tornado. It's nice the same way that spinning until you're dizzy is nice, or rotating your wrist to hear its carpal-tunnel popping is nice. In other words, it's nice in ways that make me uneasy, nervous, childlike, helpless, and human. She sat on the couch and we talked about nothing; talked about sex scenes in movies and drug scenes locally. I do not pretend to know anything about getting high, other than that it did not appeal to me when I tried it, but I secretly want to tell her: I sometimes think it's too much letting go, and that it's the freedom that scares me. That the haze and the fog would let all my own secret hazes and fogs slip out, and never get back in. It is for this reason that a weekend of pot will, for me, always seem like a lot. Somewhere between February's blizzard and the snow in April, we became friends. Easy friends, mostly. I know because she of the way she sits when she talks with me; I know because I could see her figure in the back of the room last night, there because I told her what I was doing and not because I asked her to be. Floating around me like those petals, swirl swirl swirl. I told her that I had a revelation the night before, sharing a bed with another grrl. I realized that sexually, the brunt of the move making is on me, and that I am generally the one to push things forward. It's a revelation I've had before, but it has to remind me it's there every few months. We were in bed, and she was curling into me, spooning me. I was wearing a shirt, and she was not. She was wearing pants, and I was not. I felt her face get close to my neck and her hand traced along my arm. I sleep-sighed and let her stay like that, knowing she wouldn't kiss me, and knowing I wouldn't kiss her. I don't know if she knew what I knew, or if she knows that really, I think I just want to be her friend. That really, I'm in love with someone else. That I'm in love with the person I'm telling this to, who is leaning back into the couch looking sleepy and relaxed and who, somewhere between February's blizzard and the snow in April, became my friend. I ask her if she knows what I mean, about knowing that someone wants to kiss you, but not feeling the same, and resisting their kiss pull. She does not, she says, but she understands anyway. It takes her by surprise every time. Sometimes the petals catch in your hair, and look like snowflakes blown up far beyond their normal size. You realize what's around you, and it takes you by surprise. You feel strange, like you're disrupting the natural order of things by standing in the middle of a flower storm. It's not right, but it's perfect. The flowers want you to be there, but you do not, or vice-versa. It's a battle of the wills, but neither of you knows that the other has control. If I don't tell her soon, I'll explode. |