Sometimes skin encases a storm. Not the beautiful chaotic downpour that pulls pain through red eyes in a detoxifying cleanse. The kind of storm that refuses to ensue, and instead sits like a thick smog of dread. Grey clouds brew and movement stalls and pressure builds until I. Just. Can’t. Breathe.

But I promised happy writing. Let me try again. Let me tell of life’s purest touch, let me imagine intimate love.

 

The clothing of confusion is thrown to the floor and a different fabric is wrapped around me. In life’s tender hold, something pure and soft rushes into me, washing me clean. Clarity comes in waves, and suddenly, everything is beautiful.

Beautiful in the transcendence of skin, in the consultation of sight and truth, in the heartbeat rippling water’s surface. Beautiful in the way a graveyard of stars becomes a kingdom of fairy lights and the once lonely girl finds a home in something bigger than herself.

My fragile skin is electrified by the world’s touch, and I can feel something within me stirring, newly awakened by this intimacy. The sky’s breath is my breath, cleansing my inside and then returning to the atmosphere, softened by the lips through which it passes. My being vibrates along the strings tying this life together, the invisible tapestry stitched with ancient secrets.

The fabric is woven with the silver thread of distant galaxies, textured with the crackled bark of archaic trees, dappled with the light spots of a dewy fawn, stitched with the soft edges of fluttering leaves, tied with the opal spiral of a snail’s shell, and folded with the billows of good clean wind.

These are the moments to treasure. These are the ports in a storm.