My life is full of maps. All forms, of every age of the world, of every level of importance; my maps guide me, lead me and tempt me. The floor plan of our one bedroom (with loft) apartment can map out our sex. From moving day, when we christened the carpet at the foot of the spiral stairs with our fluids in lieu of champagne. The rug burn on your spine lingered for weeks. Our bedroom, the wide bathroom, the love seat in the loft and the kitchen counter - each can be placed in carnal topography (alongside the embarrassment of our neighbors continuously catching glimpses of nakedness via our second story window).
My wall is full of maps. Four large paper worlds, safe within their black frames, untouched behind their dusty glass (as they say, I keep house casually). 15th century Africa stretches out latter-day Mozambique to the Right Bank of modern Paris. The World hangs flat to the wall to the northwest of the hand-colored Milky Way. If I could shatter the world's glass and dive into its textured surface what could I find? Push through the deep wet earth with bleeding knuckles, worming my way through twisted roots, diving under concrete building foundations for the silent joy of the cool soil on my skin. I encounter earthworms composting English gardens, badgers tucked in their burrows and the wise roots of ancient oaks. I glimpse buried land mines, plastic grocery bags that are not rotting in landfills and as I swim forward my hands brush chemical waste that burns through the pads of my fingers.
I break through the dirt into a limestone cave, inhaling fresh air that tickles my cheek as it drips in through the high roof. A silent pool, dark and endless as Gollum's mountain lair, stretches out in front of me. I plunge my raw hands into the icy water and sigh in relief as the lake begins to numb them. Crouching as I am at the lake's edge, my attention catches on the myriad of pale shells embedded in the rock. Carbon remnants of cannibalistic moon snails, shy limpets and brittle crabs are preserved as a map to the great sea that once filled this space. Fossils are a key to the history of a place. They are a marker of time and of life's mortality.
As I pull my hands from the lake, I am reminded of evolution, of fish to bird to mammal to me. Shaking the water from my reddened skin I feel nothing - each nerve has gone to sleep, to awaken in agony as though being born for the first time. Tucking my hand into my dirt-encrusted pockets I call your name across the lake. The timbre of my voice is magnified and I toss my head back and reach out my arms, willing myself to fly. I am engulfed by the power of your name. I focus in the darkness and the cavern around me resounds with you. I can take the time to enjoy the chills that roll through my skin. I love to feel you in me.
We map each others bodies, far more carefully than we map our own. I know that in the southeast hemisphere of your lithe body I will find the words of your favorite poet. E.E. Cummings inked on the pale ankle in tribute to living the examined life. If I were to draw my finger along your equator, over your navel and encircling your waist, I would find birthmarks. Just to the southwest on your muscular back they rest, like pigmented café au lait islands on the milky ocean of skin. Birthmarks that remind me that it was not always this way. Those subtle stains were drawn to my attention when you were some other girl's and your lover pointed them out to claim you. Now they are my mine to find and to kiss. The fingers are mine that cover the islands when I pull you across our mattress towards me. I kiss you and feel your lips curve into a smile against mine. You whisper and my breath envelops your words, "It wasn't always this way."
I smile and run my fingers down your thighs as I softly bite your lip. I wish I could pierce your mouth, feel the sweet new-penny blood rising under my tongue. Instead I claw my way to the summit of you and look down into carnivorous golden eyes, glowing like the amber pendant catching the sunlight as it swings from my hand. Laying aside the jewelry and clothes that separate us I melt into your skin as I reveal it, until we are one slick, lithe body. I sit on your hips as I bask in the warmth of you, naked beneath me. I want to map you, to have always a reference to your face, your ribs, your thighs. I want to roll topographic tools over your slow curves and across the sharp angles of bone that stretch taut the skin.
I want to find my way back to this moment, to this picture of grace twisting under me, long hands bound at small wrists by our favorite sweet scented rope. You are spread across the black iron headboard, licking your lips as I wrap silk torn from a geisha's kimono around your eyes, hooding you as I would a falcon on my arm. I trace your lines with my tongue, stopping at your mouth to drink in the moans and sighs that accompany my progress. Down the line of your neck, soft as snap-dragons. Across the curve under your breasts, over the curve of your ribs. Could I carve a ship from your rib cage and stretch your skin around it, using a flap of my own freckled shoulder as a sail and carry us off across the endless ocean to your coffee isles? Follow our homemade maps along your equator? To sand and sun and salty waves. The taste of you reminds me of the ocean.
I lick the waves that lap on your shore, the scent of you devouring the ocean breeze that drifts in from the beach across the road. My tongue leaves moist trails down your leg and I nibble on your ankle. My mouth tastes the words inked there; I consume the power that moves you. The power of language that brings emotion to boil and rage under your calm surface. I want that power. Power of ocean immeasurable, and power of words, irreparable. With difficulty I bridge the gap between your splayed legs and begin my journey past freckles and scars that record your past and up to the hollow of you. I can look up at you from here, an ancient crocodile awaiting a new prey.
With the strips of mulberry silk wound over your face and the rope sinking into your skin you are the most beautiful thing I have ever had the pleasure to touch. Your head lifts to the ceiling as you present your rouged cheek to me and gasp in response to the lightest grazing of my fingers across your inner thigh. I love to watch you as I play in your silky wetness. Your mouth pulls me to you as an abundance of expressions play across your parted lips. I rest my fingers on the gateway of your thighs and draw myself along you to skim your mouth with mine. Teasing, your tongue flicks across mine so I bury it with my own. I gulp you down until we are both gasping for breath and I sink back into you. The ocean pulls me, a siren's call as I lick my way from top to bottom of your swollen slit and down again in one smooth motion, resting my fingers heavily on your hips. You buck under me and I inhale deeply and dive into you, savoring the taste and texture of you in my mouth. Lightly, slowly, in circles and squares, in figure-eights I tease your sex to rise up to me and I meet it with eager strokes. I push myself into you and am rewarded by my name escaping your lips, escaping though the open window towards the sea. I feel you throw your hips into my arms and I never remove my mouth as I thrust into you roughly and endlessly. With a gasp and tightening your thighs around my face and your wetness around me you arch above me. You arch above me and I am buried under you, in awe of this vision I have created from the perfection of alabaster into this shining, gasping sex-filled deity. Your lines are sparking like diamonds so perfect are they as I slip my hands under the curve of your back and gently take weight from you and lower you onto the mattress once again.
Can I map the events? Create a paper to fold up and stow away in my pocket to reorient my self to this point? I dare not speak lest my memory map dissolve as I gently unbind you and draw you into my arms. I stroke the red marks from the ropes on your skin and kiss the curls on top of your head. Your smile breaks me into a thousand pieces and I struggle to recapture myself as you melt into me. It wasn't always this way. But it shall be this way again. My life is full of maps.
Originally Published December 2006: Oh Oh Oh!