I wrote her name, **Naoko**, against the double-sided panel of my window and watched the rain through the letters where my fingers once were. I have imagined tracing the same letters, in a a calligraphy only I know, on her skin. How I long to be with her – to lay my hands against her soft shoulders, to press my eager fingers against the balls of her feet, to love each toe so gently.
*~ And all this devotion was rushing over me // And the questions I have for a sinner like me // But the arms of the ocean deliver me ~*
I sway, whilst listening to a track that made me think of her, how I’d love to wrap myself around her, our foreheads touching, as we sink into the freezing cold Pacific. But all I have is this cup of coffee, where she runs in circles, circles, circles.
**xxxxx**
I heard her pull over the drive way.
*Thwop. Blam. Jingle-Jangle.*
Wet, soggy steps softly approached our cabin’s door. Three knocks – I swung it open, and there she was, cold, drenched, shivering.
She popped her swampy shoes off, and, barefoot, carefully waddled towards the kitchen while I started looking for a warm cloth- anything – to dry her.
I asked her if she wanted me to run the shower warm, but she didn’t hear me – on her airpods, probably.
She was busily putting away her haul – in the fridge, on the shelves, while still wet. Her off-white shirt clung on her curvy form like a latex glove, dipping here, protruding here- almost skin-tone now, most specially on the parts where her twin peaks nestle.
Stooping lower now to mind the crisper, Naoko continued to sway with the tunes she’s listening to. I chuckled a bit as her happily hefty bottom swung to the beat.
I put my hands, warm and eager, on her hips and slid it up her waist – startling her for a second.
She turned to face me while she removed her airpods, but I held her hands and urged her to keep them on. I wrapped her with a towel and gently kneaded her back while she dried off.
*“Take this off”*, I urged, while tugging at her shirt.
She nodded, and deftly pulled the wet linen above her head, giving way to a blessed view of rotund mounds set against a deliciously honeyed skin, caged by a thin carnation ministration.
*“Don’t make this weirder!”* She giggled, while continuing her furious dabbing.
Granted, we are both women in our thirties, staying in a wooden cabin outside the grey city, to practice our art. She, a sculptor, me, a humble, frustrated lyricist.
*“I won’t”*, I cood, almost. *”Dear” – I wanted to add.*
I handed her a warm cuppa. *“Your shower’s ready.”*
Naoko and I have been talking. Talking. *And talking even more*. I thought – nay, I believed – that the inevitable will happen someday, that somehow, through the cosmo’s enigmatic ways, I’ll find myself in bed with this gorgeous, voluptuous woman. That somehow, we’ll wake up in a gentle morning, the tweets of a throng of horny birds the music we’ll listen to as we go about our day, as we go about each other.
I stayed in the kitchen, mopping away her wet footsteps that lead to the shower. I heard the pitter-patter from behind the heavy, wooden door – caps popping open, and close- then, the predictable tapping stopped.
*“Mikaela”,* I heard her say.
*“Yes?”,* I replied, stopping a few steps from her door, both the mop, and my heart, on my hand.
**A long pause. A sigh. A heartbeat. Or two.**
*“Join me, won’t you?”*