Seventeen, Forever

Everyone can see the surface of her… the mouth, the body, the light she throws so far that strangers turn on the street.

That's the public one.

That's what the world gets.

But there is another woman inside the seen one, and she only exists in the turning-toward:

The moment the breath changes, the hips answer, the hands stop being polite and a second self steps out of the first…

… one that has never belonged to anyone but this.

That's the one you're mad for.

Not the beauty.

The yes.

The whole self, handed over, unhidden, her mouth open, her eyes finding yours to make sure you are watching her want you.

Your body knew before your mind did.

The man built to wait, to respond, to ache his whole life on one question: ‘am I wanted for me,’ gets his answer under his hands, in her breathing, in every place she says you, this, now, more.

No wonder you can't keep still around her.

She is answering the thing you were born asking.

They told you it fades.

That fire settles into embers, that grown bodies forget how to be seventeen.

They were wrong, or they never had this… two people with nothing to wait out, gut to gut, wet and laughing and starving, still reaching for each other in the morning light… the sheets ruined… the day irrelevant.

You are not refusing to grow old.

You are simply, finally, being met and a met body does not cool.

It burns clean.

It burns like the first time, every time, because every time she opens the whole miracle happens again…

… she gives herself, and there you are, and neither of you can believe your luck.