Ferns at dusk
A holy hot standoff
Things feel like they are coming hot and fast at the moment, like Tetris … level eight.
The pace changes and I coil myself around every task. It’s an effort to stop.
***
Ferns grow tall in my garden, unfurl in the midday sun, waving at me from the subtle breeze that just takes the edge of the heat. Only just.
It is holy hot.
I think of curling up and of uncurling, the rhythm of contraction and release … of waves pulsing between still plateaus. The crescendo followed by the apex … and then all that is left is a collapse.
And yet any stillness is just an illusion.
***
What is stillness? Can we know it without death?
The French have an intriguing way of describing an orgasm - la petite mort - the small death.
Do we have to die … even just a little … to feel the apex of pleasure?
***
There were fifty-five rescues from the sea yesterday. Rip tides that could tug you to the next cove in a few panicked breaths. Hidden sandbanks and lethal undercurrents.
This is a wave that will not behave.
People think they can handle it.
They can’t.
They try to fight. Therein lies the problem.
***
The descent, when you feel it with your full body, is truly cataclysmic. All that energy that has been rising and rising … breathy moments stretch out like ferns uncurling … and then … it implodes. A cascade, a rush, an annihilation.
The point of release ... do we fall or rise?
***
What happens next?
Something tender. An amorphous dance of saline froth. Beneath the foamy mash, something is reforming but it’s impossible to grasp.
This is what it feels like.
Tangy and electric.
Sour and salty.
Swelly and boundless.
***
Surrender?
***
The part of me that can’t rest until all the doing is done … she’s in a standoff. Level eight is not enough.
She’s facing her opponent: the whimsical one who wants to waft through life all flight and fancy … lithe and languorous.
They don’t see eye to eye. Like cats that tolerate the same owner but not each other. They move around each other, barely concealing their disgust, hairs pricking from taut bodies.
How insulting that we should have to occupy the same territory!
A duel fuelled by shame and pride, the most lethal of opponents.
Kill or cure?
***
The standoff intensifies.
The feline opponents circle in fierce delight. It is sumptuous. And potentially deadly.
Pride joins the fray and it is a delectable shitshow.
She is not ready to surrender.
Neither of them are.
***
It’s the spring birds, all over again, the heat sharpening their chorus. Mating season … and it is vicious and thrilling. A joust of eroticism.
Are they flirting? Or fighting?
***
It’s cooler now, and the edges of the ferns bow their head-tails. A tender curl, a soft reproach. Is that defeat? Or defiance?
***
Is it easier to defend than to be exposed?
