#epically long

I just finished The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett at the recommendation of my boyfriend. And oh my word... it’s good. It’s really good. It’s also really long and has more to do with monks, cathedral building and church intrigue than I thought I’d ever enjoy, but I loved it. The story is very complex - any attempt to sum it up would be extremely difficult - but it follows the lives of a couple different groups who all intersect in messy ways. It takes forever, but all the different strands eventually come together in an incredibly satisfactory way. 

This book is not for you if you dislike cathedrals or can’t bring yourself to care about the daily life of medieval monks. This book is not for you if you are impatient about everything happening quickly. This book is not for you if you are sensitive to rape and no one is around to tell you what pages to skip. However, this book is for you if you want an excellently told story with all sorts of drama set in the Middle Ages. The story feels incredibly real to me; Follett has a way of writing that makes the characters and setting seem tangible. Follett also seems to like torturing his characters, as every time one thread of the plot is solved more problems come up. It’s a masterpiece, and I heartily enjoyed it. 

I see your hair, silky and calling out to be touched. The light that reflects off of messy bronze strands is hypnotic. Oh how I would love to run my greedy fingers through that richness. Feeling those short, shaggy delicacies ghost between digits and kiss each awkward knuckle. I would, in desperate devotion, be unable to stop myself from twisting and clenching and grasping oh so gently at that beautiful mess.

I would straddle your lap, connecting our hips, chests, bodies, skins, and selves. Shivers would rip my sanity and conscience from my mind as they waterfall down my back. All control would leave leave my hands as soon as they found your hair. Tangling my hands in your hair would ground me to that moment, that place, that incredible second; a connection that otherwise threatens to send me reeling through space and time.

If my hands are in your hair, I am framing your face. The landscape of my limited knowledge, which only my eyes have been privileged to explore. Suddenly, my lips are empowered. They are free. And yet I am enslaved. Finally permitted choice, I would sell myself into eternal servitude in exploration of your lips.

If I could kiss your cheek; for only a fraction of a lifetime feel that deliciously smooth flesh on the tip of my tongue, what joy I would have. The rough stubble along your jawbone would tease and torture and tickle and devour me. The taste of your skin would be my utter undoing. And if offered the opportunity to destroy myself with those lips of yours, I would volunteer so enthusiastically to be demolished.

Those gates, with that secret power and addictive nectar, I would sanctimoniously lay siege to. My childish, foolish tongue would dance in wonder and you would be forced to reign in my exuberance with a chuckle or a nibble. My teeth, stubbornness and forcefulness embodied, must be excused for their imprudence. Your flavor is just so potent and acts as a drug.

I nip and toy with your chapped lips, trailing down your neck. I play my way down your throat until I reach the ever defiant collarbone, in whose territory I could meander for eternities. Savoring my Last Meal I am trembling with anticipation (of dessert, finality, and my unraveling)

My eyes are heavy with the weight of the beauty before me, around me, within me. they close in resignation.

Oh how I adore your nose. Its erect, rigid annoyance is the pressure that reminds me where your face is going. A bump against my shoulder, a nudge beside my ear. Your nose is Benedict. It betrays your intention and direction. Luckily, any foreknowledge I receive gives me time not to steel myself against our onslaught, but to call each nerve to arms. In the lifetimes between the alert from your nose and your treacherous lips' first fatal blow, I fall apart a million times over.

And how safe I feel, self destructing in that lap. Born, reborn in that embrace. My weight nestled in that fleshy trap. I melt into your firm frame. Those thighs are the perfect pressure. In one of my moments of impetuance, I have pushed you back so that when I lean forward to unlock your lips, our bodies must converge.

Even my bellybutton feels the insistence of your comforting strength. My hips are snakes, and you are a charmer. They move and dance as though hypnotized. Slow sensual dance that I have never learned, but know in the darkest alleys of the recesses of my mind.

Your breath now catches occasionally in the back of your deep throat. Each gasp is a stadium of cheering which pushes me to repeat this animalistic trick. Oh glorious womanhood, that it might bestow upon me the ability to steal your rationality and words and breath.

Being this close leaves me vulnerable, susceptible to your scent. Deadliest poison. Do you even know the power you have? Do I have some mythical magic as well? As my mere mortal corpse struggles to endure this barrage of pleasure, the tables are permanently turned.

The guns are drawn. My end is near. If I was trembling before, my goosebumps have become an epidemic. Those beautiful appendages. Oh, your hands are in my sight. Are you thinking too much? Regrets? Morals or vestiges of chivalry? They are so rough yet bring me such sweet, smooth satisfaction.

Gracefully wrapped around your pen. I have watched them at work. It might frighten you to know of how I worship those hands. Do they skip across piano keys? I wonder if they face danger in the daily form of a parring knife. I bet they have been clenched in outrage when the world has been too cruel for one body to handle. Have they shattered plaster?Or, have they blessed other lost and suicidal souls? Can they caress and suggest and undress?

Oh tricksters. Masters of the circus, commanders of armies, soothers of demons. Hands so perfect that each round finger tip makes me want to suckle and self sacrifice. They inspire Plato, Picasso, Mozart, Shakespeare, and orgasm.

They raise slowly from his sides like blaspheming spirits of the undead. How could I forget? Naivete! Distraction. Moment of truth. The air around us seems suddenly heavy and moist.

Hello breaking point.

Your hands brush past my bare shoulders, scorching each skin cell they contact. I am on fire. You are salvation and damnation. If I live through this, I pray only that one day I will look at your hands not in longing but in confident and mutual possession. That your hand and mine may mold together so as to let all the reservation and feeling flow freely into each other.

Two tidal waves of lust, love, trust, hope, laughter, irony, truth, macaroni and cheese, movie nights, cuddling, soap, tigers, science fiction, treble clef, and the color red interweave and fold into each other in peaceful resignation.

In these my last moments, my eyes are magnetically drawn to yours. Our glasses mockingly act as picture frames to orbs. Moons which wane in the eroding presence of history. I see you. I can't read you. You have created a moron; illiterate, I am left to live the story with no hint or foreshadowing. thankfully, you appear just as confused.

Please don't fight me.

Your hands have circled around and are positioned for the final blow. Prepared for the push, I plea with my entire being for acceptance. 

Your hands.

I love you.

Your hands grasp.

One.

Two. 

Three.

Ten million.

Your hands pull me closer.