Bodies
I.
Something about the body of a woman that captures me. Tucking her hair behind her ear, or the absolute soft velvet smooth of her legs, I imagine them wrapped in mine, twisting like vines around a tree, an invasive species sucking the life the force the love from deep, my marrow leaking onto her I want to stain her or rip her apart maybe, something about a woman’s body that makes me a force like I could maybe nurture and hold and be sanctity or I could maybe grab and pinch and shove and find power in her in breast and breath in self. Maybe. I suppose it’s more a thought experience than a practice. More of a wish that lives deep in my pelvis like a stone keeping me in the earth. Something about the body of a woman that feels like earth and birth and longing and a sameness that holds me close.
The first time I kissed a woman, there was wine in the cracks in my lips. I think.
Maybe not.
The first time I kissed a woman I was sitting on carpet. Maybe it was grey and rough and smelled like boy sweat and baseball leather and there were eight of us sitting in a circle around an empty bottle of something maybe alcohol maybe soda. Maybe it was white and plush and smelled like basement and Beyoncé Heat perfume. We might have been sitting on the couch, just the two of us. Maybe it was Olivia. Maybe it was Nina. Probably it was Isabel. Maybe it was 2012, maybe 2014. Maybe it was 1998. Memory is funny like that.
The first time I conquered a woman’s body, the carpet was white and plush and she was on her period. I might have been fifteen but I might be lying and this might have been the third or fourth time. She left a hickey on my neck the size of my fist, and I had all five fingers inside of her, my mouth on her, her heat on me. We took photos of each other in our underwear with my digital camera and selfies of us kissing with Snapchat filters and we drank cheap red wine straight from the bottle, the last drop deep in our bellies bringing warmth and comfort.
When I woke up the next morning, my mouth tasted like copper and my nose ring had fallen out and the piercing closed up and I wasn't sure if we had had sex or if it didn’t count. I didn’t regret it. I craved it. We might have done it again. I can’t remember.
I like the ways girls touch me because they understand the curves and the texture; they rub against me with their fingers like tracing a secret language onto my skin, with their arms like spinning silk in the millimeters between us.
The body of a woman like the body of faith.
II.
Something about the body of a man that grips me. Broad backed thick legged bodies compressing and crushing me until tension leaks from me and I imagine being pressed into nothingness into an idea of myself while his body holds mine and I go limp in his arms. Something about a man’s body that makes me want to fold up into myself into a version of myself that needs and gives and cries like maybe I could be real for a minute. Just a minute or two as my body coils around his. This my body has done this my body knows the body of a man touching body of mine we touch we know. Something about the body of a man that feels like weight and home and craving and a difference that brings me to life.
Boys like to tell me that I’m a good kisser. Almost every single one of them, including the six (?) I kissed in one night on my seventeenth birthday—the seven (?) girls apparently didn’t find my tongue impressive enough for mention, or maybe it was that I had kissed them all before.
I was thirteen when I had my first kiss sitting on a concrete ledge and my dad came and picked me up and I played Bubbly by Colbie Caillat in the car on the way home. Twice. Joseph had already kissed three of my friends by then, and I was nervous that my tongue wouldn’t taste as good, but the second time we played tonsil hockey (thanks, mom) we sat on a bench in the woods and he looked sheepishly at his lap and said you’re a really good kisser and the corners of my mouth bowed upward and our next kiss was all teeth and smile.
The first time I took my pants off for a boy was in the dressing room of my arts high school during homeroom. It was 2012 and I was fourteen, this I know. The floor was cold tile against my back and the lights harsh glaring down at me and the clock measuring how long we stayed there I don’t remember.
I don’t remember how naked I was, but I remember making sure the doors were locked and I remember his hands on my breasts his face nuzzled between my legs his hair under my fingertips. I remember much more about the boys, it’s more clear and accepted and expected. More sure.
I like the way boys touch me because they don’t know what it feels like to carry weight where I do and it’s all adventure and exploration and awe at a breast. I like the size of their hands and the callouses on their fingers and their bitten nails the way they grab and the way they bite.
The body of a man like the body of God.
III.
Something about a body man or woman or otherwise that feels like something I want to wrap myself up in use as a blanket a roof a sky maybe like something that could be freedom and could be safety. Something about a body no matter whose I want to coil always tangling, stroking, concrete contact, always wanting more wanting closer wanting to breathe exhales and exchange ribs.
Something about a body that lets me be with a person genuine and honest and comfortable. How can you be with a body when you cannot touch it?
Bodies like a need.
Devouring.
Bodies like remembering who I am like knowing who I’m with.
A hunger for skin.
Amelia Clare Wright is a recent graduate of Emerson College with a degree in Communications Studies and the intention to pursue an MFA in nonfiction creative writing. She grew up in Baltimore City and is now working on a memoir about her body. Her work has appeared in Oyster River Pages and The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts.