Embrace the Paradox

Embrace the Paradox ~ Original Poetry © JA Valderrama

Archive for the category “love”

Feeling Myself For You

Whether I feed it or starve it
It remains
This thing between us breathes
And beats with a life of its own now
An invisible cord that tethers
A bond, but not a bind
Ever so careful, we have been
It stretches, quietly reaching out
To touch us where it matters
Burrowing deep inside
Until we are both surprised
By its strength and resilience
And this steady allegiance
That asks for nothing in return
That simply wants to be as we
Take in one another, unannounced
But not covert, seeming to accept
The slow sweep of our gaze
Losing myself at moments
Swayed as I am by the sounds
Made by your fingers as
I watch the freckles and fair hair of your arms
Music coursing through our veins
And I feel your eyes on me
Noticing every little thing
Just like I do
A delight, bittersweet, at not having been let down
Of knowing that your honorable nature
Both draws me in and keeps me at bay
This shared reality between us
Like a secret paradise
Unspoken yet acknowledged in subtle ways
And the others fade into the background
To be replaced and forgotten
But you remain
Aware, always thinking, taking care
I can feel your mind at work
As you move with solidity and purpose
Releasing the beautiful sounds of your soul
With an ease I admire and envy
My eyes returning to you time and again
As if we are the only two
Really alive in the room
And I want to praise you and celebrate you
Give myself to you with my body
Which I have honed to a fine edge
In the time I have known you
Sleek like a cat with my ribs
Just beneath my skin
Feeling myself for you

Look

There was that look
I caught it
What if I had not
Then none of this…
No denying, I had been watching
Just in case
The way one watches for a rainbow
And it lights you up inside
Because you didn’t expect it
Not really, more like just hoping
For a little magic
The buzz and crackle of current
Running through us and
We feel alive!
Not just going through the motions
Not just pretending for our keep
Our egos with blinders on
Steady in some mission

For a few hours it unfurled
Your words I can’t even remember
Just how my smile bloomed under your gaze
This sweetness between us
As I felt discovered by you
A warm bath sinking into
Beads of water on dewy skin
The taste of salt
And private senses opening

But I have been through this before
And knowing how this heat
Has nowhere to go,
in this small hot room
full of instruments
where we meet each week,
Eating itself up
Into a conflagration
Until it burns itself down
I tell myself,
after days lost in that look,
Not this time

And the next encounter
I do not beam
But smile politely
I do not watch for signs
But stay focused on my work
Holding the reins
Of this fiery passion
So that only a kind of love remains
A simmer, not a firestorm

When I see you, I feel it
Memory most fleeting, of a mere look
Brimming with possibilities
Intimacies enacted in imagination
Conveyed without speaking
In the movement of air, in our songs,
The smallest of gestures, tendered
And the unsaid.

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