Things Unsaid (June 2002)

Monica Stewart "Embracing Keys"








I have no idea why I am here
I’ll have you know my intentions were
just to
sleep
I didn’t expect that I would feel this
comfortable, relaxed.
Here at your house after a hundred
and one nights of refusing to come
creating clever excuses like Sharazad
who
made up stories to save her life,
I’m here in your bed hoping you’ll save my childhood fantasies
Is this where you wanted me?

I’m ignoring
the strange hunger
of wanting to be filled,
that is simply satisfied by your hug

I’ve been in love
It doesn’t conquer all; it doesn’t even make you a more than conqueror
I’ve spent many a nights longing
smarting
bleeding
my portion of sour poisoned love until the bite drained
The man I loved,
like all the others, left before he came
But you already know that
And you and I are just friends
And we talk so easily
And I don’t want to be here just because you’ve decided you are lonely


But here I am.
I in the poppy fields of your cologne
In the greenness of your arms
new like a fresh blade of grass
I feel the hunger of words without action
The soft jazz on the radio
the presence of music, and the absence of harsh light
which makes everything blur
I am scared to tell you what all women
tell men when they feel like this
That I could imagine one thousand and one nights of forever
like this
Fitting
Getting drunk off your sleepy breath
as it creeps ever so lightly on my neck.
forgetting the wall that you so easily erect

Am I one of many a web of women
who unsuccessfully tried to scale you?
Are you intrigued by the fact that you are in a place no other men have been
waiting
to catch me in your web?

How can I tell you that at seven years old I used to listen to midnight love
Grown folks’ clichés were my soulful syllables
singing of something mysterious that made mommies and daddies shut the door
I wanted to know what Luther and Regina were talking about
when then wailed that sweet plush in the middle wail
Back then
my precocious ears wanted to gulp down like an Otterpop
when I wondered
what
it would feel like
to share this kind of night
warm, sweet, thick and like the back of your neck
with a man like you
How can I tell you that when you hold me closer
and kiss my neck it is like your lips are reading my thoughts
your lips are speaking to me in a language I have never known
but still know like the secret words
of childhood
How can I tell you that I want you to know me,
all of me, invite you to test the waters of part of me that few ever swim?
That I love you more than I ever loved him?

I am afraid of you
Afraid that I enjoy your changing moods
too much for my own good
Afraid because when I hear hurt in your voice
I want to kiss your silence
into speech
until at last I know
And just when I think I hear my fear echoing off my ears
I feel your breath against my neck and your lips are asking me back to
quiet moments a thousand and one days before
I even met you
with a curiosity that
is precocious and real today as it was then

I want to love you.

I want to kiss brown mango lips, so thick and sweet
I am tasting all your vulnerabilities

In this space I want to know you.
See the man behind the wall, if he is willing.
Move me. I’ll let you.

Anita Baker is
coloring
the night a dark shade of blue that rests on everything
including your sleeping face
which is unequivocally one of the most beautiful I have ever seen.

I suck my lip hard,
hold
my words behind my teeth,
my thoughts in the webs of my mind,
my emotions under my skin
before my
my skin, my lips, my mind
end up betraying me
and I slip and say what
could come so easily form my smarting mouth
in this moment,
aware that moments, like the night, like jazz, fade ever so quickly

“it feels good to love you….inside……” Anita sings.