Lake Water Woman gets kissed

I stood facing the Buffalo Man, a great indecision of air between us. He stirred nothing in me. “I’m sorry,” I said. “Maybe if I could get closer. Why can’t I get close to you?”

“You don’t want me enough.”

“Oh but I do.” I knew that I did, I remembered writing it down.

“You only want me for my money.”

First I laughed, and then I stopped laughing. Under the absurdity of that accusation, there was truth. I had pinned on him my hopes of a way out of debt. I was thinking he would help me make some money. And all the pressure I felt to hurry it up, make this connection, take it somewhere, were all rooted in the idea that this liaison would produce something sellable.

And that’s why I didn’t feel the pull anymore. It’s not his salability that I love.

I let it fall away like an ice shell cracking and the distance fell with it and there he was, breathing into my hair. “Want me because I am strong and true. Want me because everything alive in you wakens to my touch.”

He kissed me then. He tasted like, oh—he tasted like lake water.

He tasted like me.

OOO