forest lullaby

Each year, when the summer heat presses to the skin like long, wet kisses, they drive hours and rent a cabin. Wooden slabs, large windows, tangles of vines. It is their escape from cement, routine, a stuffy apartment, their voyage into air that smells of wildflowers and tastes like mist.

Their days here are filled with hikes, reading, naps, light conversation, simple meals, sunlight bubbling through swaying trees. Usually their nights are soft lips, spooned bodies, breaths of silence, and deep sleep. But sometimes, when the moon casts a glow into the room that seems like a coy whisper into an awaiting ear, nudging them away from inhibitions, their nights are this:

The grass is still slippery from the afternoon rain. It is a current against her hair, shoulder blades, spine, bottom, cunt, backs of thighs, ankles. He pulls her, rough hands grasping her underarms and tugging. She is a river, or a boat, or maybe some lifeless thing floating until it hits a shore.

She knows he is seeing: eyes covered in fraying cloth, mahogany hair damp and tangled, lips like crushed strawberries slightly parted, breasts dancing sloppily, hilly terrain, belly button tucked in, a shadow valley, legs stretched out, toes a blooming orchard.

The buzz of insects expands and she knows they must be at the edge of the clearing, ready to go into the forest. Her body then experiences twigs, stones, clumps of fallen leaves, protruding tree roots, ragged bushes, stray flowers. And then, her skin and flesh sore, his breath releasing in bursts, they stop.

He pulls her up and presses her to a large tree, hand on her lower back firmly. The bark kisses her breasts, nipples, belly with scratches and friction. Her feet sink into the soil, mud huddling between her toes, lapping up and over. He moves away from her and she hears only breeze and rustle, cicadas and faint touches of his steps.

Minutes pass, the hum of the forest a lullaby to peel her nerves back, exposing only her overwhelming Yes. Her fingertips, earlobes, nape of neck, bottom crease, clitoris, heat, backs of knees, feet arches, everything, need him, want him, will allow anything for him. By the time he comes back, her labia is a puddle, her thighs damp, and he knows this without looking or feeling. He knows the suspense pries open her whole body.

He wraps the thick vine around her, left shoulder to right waist, around, left thigh to right knee, up, waist again and again, up, the crease beneath her arms, again and again, molding her to the tree. Each breath rubs soft to rough, a struggle, a butterfly packaged back into a cocoon.

There is a pause, and she knows he must be simply looking at her, open, exposed, bound, and realizing this makes her cheeks flush.

When his first two fingers enter her and press the spot behind her public bone, she gasps and knows her wetness is slipping down his fingers, into his palm, maybe even touching his wrist. Gradually, a third finger and forth, and like a rose or maybe simply an oven, she opens more. When his thumb, and eventually, the width of his hand are swallowed into her, she can only hear her breaths and his breaths, loud silence induced from this expansion, this want, this electric current, and if she ever carried within her scarves of modesty, she doesn't know it, or remember it, or even care.

The movement, the pressure, the stretching of his fist within her, the motion of his other hand against her clitoris, make her whole body ache, create a storm in her vulva and in her throat, and the climax that she reaches will make her blush for days.

On nights like these, when the moon does the Argentine tango and lures them out from beneath the covers, when its liquidy light licks the skin's creases, they, too, fuck in a way that they will never speak of in daylight.