Lovengly lustful
Was it love, or was it lust?
that wildfire dressed in velvet,
the hush between our heartbeats.
where every unsaid word burned gold?
They all cried lust,
a chorus of knowing tongues,
but you were the first,
I ever barred from my body’s door.
Not out of coldness.
out of terror dressed in reverence.
I trembled at the thought
of your hands learning my skin
before our souls had finished speaking.
I feared you’d taste only salt and hunger,
never knowing the cathedral
I had built for you inside my chest.
So I withheld the oldest offering,
kept my temple untouched,
not to starve you
but to prove the feast was deeper:
the long gaze across quiet rooms,
the way your name felt like prayer
on my reluctant lips.
I would not cheapen the way you saw me
by letting sex rewrite our scripture.
Everyone screamed “lust” at me.
I called it love
love so bright eye’d and bushy tailed it chose restraint,
love so sacred it chose to wait
even when waiting meant never.
And still, in the quiet after,
I ached with the almost,
the almost of you.
but all you saw in me
was a way to bust a nut.