Month: August 2025

KISS. KISSING. KISSED II

The world had gone still—hushed not by absence, but by anticipation.

Two figures stood close, close enough that their breaths wove together, warm and uneven, like the first stirrings of spring beneath frozen soil.

The first kiss came like the first petal parting at dawn—gentle, almost accidental. A brush of lips, soft as silk against skin, lingering just long enough to leave a question in the air. Then another answered it: slower, deeper, like a bloom testing the light, unfurling layer by delicate layer.

Each kiss was a stage in a quiet revelation.

One pressed their mouth to the other’s jaw—light, searching—like a blossom tipping toward the sun. Another followed along the throat, not to claim, but to feel: the pulse beneath, the warmth rising like sap in early March. And when their lips met again, full and open, it was as if two flowers, long closed, had finally recognized the same season.

Around them, the garden responded.

A cluster of camellias split their waxy shells, revealing hearts of blush and cream. Wisteria dripped from the trellis, each tiny bloom opening in turn, trembling with nectar. Petals fell like whispered secrets, catching in hair, on shoulders, on the curve of a collarbone—each one a silent witness.

Their hands moved without urgency—tracing the arc of a spine, cradling the back of a neck, slipping beneath fabric not to conquer, but to know. There was no rush, no performance—only the deep, quiet language of touch: fingers learning curves, thumbs brushing lips, palms resting over hearts that beat in loose, swelling rhythm.

One leaned in, breath warm on the other’s mouth, and kissed again—this time with a sigh, like a peony surrendering to the weight of its own beauty. The other answered with a slow, melting press of lips, like a night-blooming cereus opening under moonlight—rare, sacred, unhurried.

They were not defined by what they were not.

They simply were—bodies in motion, souls in bloom. Their love did not argue with the world; it bypassed it. It existed in the space between breaths, in the hush after a petal falls, in the way skin remembers warmth.

And as the final kiss lingered—soft, deep, complete—the last blossom opened in the garden: a single magnolia, white as dawn, unfolding petal by petal into the light.

No names. No labels. No borders. Only this: two beings, touching, tasting, trusting— like flowers, like seasons, like something the earth has always known.

KISS. KISSING. KISSED

They stood at the edge of night and day, where shadows soften and light begins to blush.

No words passed between them—none were needed. Their bodies leaned into the hush, drawn together like petals folding toward the sun.

The first touch was barely there: a graze of lips, tentative as a bud sensing warmth. Then again—deeper, bolder—like a flower yielding to the inevitable, peeling open in slow surrender. Their mouths met not to take, but to unfold.

Around them, the garden breathed with quiet transformation. Blossoms—tight fists of color at dusk—now loosened their grip. Silk layers parted, revealing hearts glistening with dew. Each unfurling mirrored the kiss: deliberate, tender, alive with becoming.

One lover’s hand rose, not to claim, but to trace—the line of a collarbone, the swell of a lower lip—fingers mapping terrain neither owned nor defined. The other exhaled into the kiss, opening like a lily at dawn, soft and certain. There was no script here, no role to play—only the pulse of skin, the rhythm of breath, the unspoken truth of this is enough.

Their genders were not absent, but fluid—like sap in the stem, like light through petals. Neither man nor woman, or both, or something wandering freely between. Their love did not fit a shape; it made one. And in that making, there was freedom: to be touched, to touch, to tremble, to bloom.

A magnolia surrendered its final fold with a sigh. A cherry branch trembled, scattering confetti of pink. And the kiss deepened—not with hunger, but with harmony—as if two souls, long curled inward, had finally found the warmth to open.

When they parted, it was without distance. Foreheads touched. Breath mingled. The air around them shimmered, thick with pollen and possibility.

No names. No borders. Just the truth of two bodies, two hearts, two blossoms—unfurling, at last, in the same quiet light.

COURTESAN-COURSEICAN 29

SENSUAL PROMISES:

your hand rests
on the small of my back —
not pressing,
not asking —
only warm,
like sunlight
that has lingered
past dusk.

i feel it
through linen,
through skin,
through the quiet
beneath the ribs
where breath begins.

you say nothing.
the room is shadow,
candle-glow,
the faint hum
of beeswax burning low.

and then —
your thumb moves,
just once,
across the curve,
a slow arc
like a breath exhaled
in sleep.

no kiss.
no word.
only this:
the heat of you
settling into me,
as if touch
could be
a kind of rest. (finished free verse 1)

you stand
close enough
that when you breathe,
my lips taste air
that was inside you.

not touching.
not yet.

but i know
the moment your coat slips —
the sound of wool
sliding from shoulder —
i know
the shape of your throat
beneath the open collar,
the pulse there,
quick,
like a bird
held in cupped hands.

i imagine
kneeling
not in surrender,
but in hunger —
pressing my mouth
to the place
where your neck meets shoulder,
not gently,
not sweetly —
but to mark,
to taste,
to feel you shudder
before you speak.

and when you do —
when your voice cracks
on my name —
i will not answer.
i will only rise,
close the distance
like a door
locked from the inside,
and kiss you
until
the silence
between us
burns. (finished free verse 2)

the snow falls —
not to gather, but to melt
upon his lips,
as breath stirs breath
in the hush between words.

his cheek, touched by the last blush of spring,
glows like silk
dyed in firelight —
ruddy, warm,
so near I feel the heat
without touch.

a kiss, not given,
but imagined —
fluttering down
like snow in slow descent,
grazing the corner of his mouth.

and yet —
this closeness chills.
for every moment
we do not speak,
do not move,
the air thickens
with what is un-dammed:
a flood of longing
held by a glance,
by the space
of a single breath.

swift kisses
i dare not take —
each one a spark
that would set flame
to the snow in my chest.

now the snow falls constantly.
now the darkness fills
not with silence,
but with love —
heavy, drowning,
alive.

and i —
on the edge of touch,
on the verge of shattering —
am nothing
but the warmth
that dares
to melt. (finished free verse 3)

the falling snow
must vanish in the moment
from upon his lips
comes fluttering down
feinted love
in artful disarry
on either side
ruddy-cheek
hues do charm me
for some reason
with the first blush of
departing Spring
robes dyed that hue
the flames of passion
from my breast (rough free draft 1)

faint snow
falling constantly -at such a time
its weight drowns me
is drowned in darkness
filled full with love
swift flow is
dammed by fleeting moments
swifter kisses
upon the cheek
with the chilling of our distance
it seems my very self will shatter (rough free draft 2)

COURTESAN-COURSEICAN 28

how long might
night be? i know not;
but until defined
i gently smooth
these raven tresses
strand by strand;
my lover’s scent was left,
now, so far away,
i recall her still
as i lie down
her face floats before me (roughly drafted long waka)

how long the night may be, i do not know—
only that it coils like her hair through my fingers:
dark, unspooled, infinite.

each strand i trace—a filament of shadow—
twists into spiral arms of distant stars,
wound tight as vows unspoken.

her scent lingers in the curve of space,
a nebula faintly glowing where she once lay.

though she is gone—
or merely far—
i cannot tell the difference between distance and death.

so i lie beneath this vault of black,
and watch her face form in the constellations:
not lost, not dead—
but braided now into the cosmos,
forever near, forever out of reach. (finished long waka)

wildly
i am imprisoned, netted
in my lover’s black tresses;
the spider’s spanning
webs -i caught sight, today, and
ever since the deepest hue, the light
of meeting star:
how familiar a sight! (roughly drafted long waka)

wildly, i am caught—
not in rope or hook,
but in the net of her black tresses,
spun like the dark between stars:
a web of gravity and memory.

today, i saw the spider’s silk span air,
glistening with dew—
and in that fragile thread,
knew the shape of galaxies adrift,
of orbits tightening like a lover’s grip.

now, every night,
the deepest hue—the void she left behind—
holds the first light of a meeting star:
distant, flickering, yet familiar as breath.

is this how the universe fishes for souls?
with silken dark, with patient spiral,
drawing us in, strand by strand,
until we glow—not by our own fire,
but by the light we carry from her? (finished long waka)