Strangers

Do you remember when we were strangers?

It seems impossible now. That there was a time when we didn’t know each other.

When I didn’t know that you smirk when you’re nervous, that you hum to yourself when you cook, that you will drop everything if I so much as touch you, that your skin holds the scent of freshly mown grass, that your mouth tastes of strawberries, that you get shy when you flirt, even now after so long.

It feels like I knew you before I knew you. Like coming home.

I know you feel it too, though truth be told, sometimes I let you believe I have slipped my fingers deliberately into you psyche when really, you created that for your own self, or perhaps I trained you into that, to believe that my every action is designed to devastate. Running with it is a choice, though, and I will arch a brow and take you down with that look.

There was a time when I didn’t know how a firm hand on the back of your neck would drop you straight into oblivion, how a shove and a slap would render you helpless, how every violence would make your breath catch in your throat, make your knees weak, your cock hard.

And there was a time when I didn’t know your mouth on my cunt. How could I have lived so long without knowing the warm eager perfection of your lips and tongue, the way you completely unravel when I moan, the unbridled delight you take in making me come.






That was then though.

That was then, when I knew all of those intimacies, when your vulnerabilities were mine, when everything of yours was mine, when you were mine.

We have come full circle, it seems.

And here we are. In this now. Each of us set adrift, eddying in our own currents, an excruciatingly polite acknowledgement when our paths cross.

Hi, how are you? Fine, and you? Yes, fine. Well, have a good day. You too.

As these things go, it is unremarkable, predictable, mundane.

Do you remember when we weren’t strangers?

. . .