Passion

He asks what I’m passionate about and I say sex because it feels true.

Sex, I say, and I mean it. The transcendence. The connection. The way it takes you out of the everyday into the divine.

Later I’m reading a book about death and it hits me the way a long, intentional, luxurious stretch at the end of an almost-impossible-train-to-failure workout hits you.

Life. That’s the real passion.

And now I know why we connected. His soft skin and his backstory and his glasses and his eyes and his slip-under-my-defences smell and the way he held my hand and the way he touched my shoulder and the way he dived completely into the walk and the city and the music and the words with me. His openness to the erotic promise of life.

And the way we kissed.

Life and every exquisite part of it. The minutiae. The details. The ephemera. The trivialities. Every thank-fucking-god breath we take.

… the way my hair was a mess and how he had to leave early and I had to iron my shirt and stand in front of handsome boys all day and not see one of them because all I could think about was him…