Precious

My favorite part of a human mammal is the back of their neck.

How deliciously soft and delicate it can be and also pinches and 

pulses with muscles.

When my babies were small I cupped that place, there, it felt like

down feathers and soft silk, I couldn’t keep my fingertips away from it.

When I fed them, when I bathed them, when we were in the holding time, 

I trailed my love there, a little divot from base of skull to the sweetness of shoulder

blade.

It soothed me as much as it soothed them.

Even now, when they are bent over a homework problem, or drawing some sort of creation,

I pause there, my life force touching theirs.

Sometimes they brush me off,

but even now, as they are growing and reaching for their own beings, 

they let me kiss there, a little nuzzle and a sniff, 

the smell of them, the smell I can 

sense from their becoming, a scent that is all their own and familiar to me as my own.

I can feel their humanness there.

And when my lover bends over me in the pleasing time, 

I run my palm in that place,

it spans muscles and caverns, but still reminds me of the birthing time.

While they work with mouth and fingers and breath,

I put my love and worship there, my hands are warm with the force of it.

To be vulnerable and strong in those moments, 

A hint of bone and blade, 

I’ve drawn and been drawn to these others in my life,

And I am reminded of the preciousness.

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