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.