When the sea evaporates, the fire will only be barely burning embers

We were lamenting on men and sex of course, Margaret and I over an IPA pint and a glass of red wine. She was telling me about a friend that people would say was cold-hearted, but Margaret knew that she was merely independent and tough.
"It's like, I want to have a relationship with people, but not the kisses and dinner, I love you's and drawing hearts kind of relationship. It's more like the I want to study you relationship."
And Margaret said that's exactly what her friend had said before.

And we talked about our unwillingness to date right now. She has choices but she's apathetic about working at the kisses and dinner, I love you's and drawing hearts.
"I'm not willing to try, to pursue anything either and I think that means I'm happy." I'm absolutely happy.
And she agreed.

I met someone this weekend though. A familiar face but a person I hadn't noticed before. Sipping on Jameson and pulling me into him until our hip bones ground on each other; snarling when my neck was between his teeth and his skin purple and yellow from my mine.

I was shivering in only bare skin and my eyes were in line with his, but I was straining to see everything I could without turning--in my peripheral a dark spot on the ceiling and the white metal swirls of the bedpost. His face, tanned in front of a hanging photo of a beach where the island native would rather be, was illuminated with blue from the open laptop sitting on the bed, pumping out trance. Fitting music since the burn of sweat pooling in the corner of my eye could do nothing to take my gaze from him. His lips turning up at the corners as if he loved my childish fascination. The stubble making the outline of his chin seem blurred, his maroon lips lighter with the skin retreating away after being attacked, his breath cool as he exhaled my smell from his nose.
It's a moment I never want to forget, but I'll probably have to.

Lust and Passion are both on my shoulder, screaming to indulge them. I'll have to let them go soon enough though so I wish they'd just shut the fuck up and let me be.

He thinks my eyes are the crab nebula, showing him places he's never been before.

"Forever may the mirror remind you of the same; that I see you differently." If he would have been right in front of me when he said that, instead of behind a broken cell phone screen, we would be back at the beginning... I was shivering in only bare skin...

A penny for your dark thoughts dear

It took me almost an hour to get from my current living situation in the group house to my new residence--come two weeks--in Petworth, and I played "Head Full of Doubt" by the The Avett Brothers the whole 56 minutes.

It was my melancholy anthem when I left Missouri... I absorbed those lyrics and they infected me and  ignited until I could do nothing more but send tears falling onto my skin, cooling the burn.

But today I didn't cry to those lyrics. Today I smiled at them, knowing that I had freed that caged little bird. No one whistling or feeding me stale crackers.

I'm satisfied with myself and where I'm going. I have a well-paying job that has me constantly learning in a beautiful action-packed city. I met an Irish American man, with huge green eyes, shy but ablaze.

As I walked to the metro to meet him, smoking a cigarette, realizing I could still see the stars, I wondered, 'What if he rapes me?'

The new housemate Arun--a dark skinned, married, Portuguese Indian who talks so much it tickles my insides--and I were talking about sex while we sat awkwardly at the end of a pizza parlor table full of "writers." 

"Have you heard of Diane Arbus?"

"No," he said as his dark eyes peered beyond what mine were hiding.

Arbus, a photographer, my biggest inspiration, who took photos of bizarre people from midget strippers to the mentally insane. I remember thinking, as I read her biography, that I want to be like her, not giving a fuck what people think, so independent and unafraid. Some might argue I'm already like her...

But before she killed herself, she told a friend that she wanted to be raped. She was dark, obviously, but I remember my thighs getting warm and my back arching as the sensation overtook me when I read those words.

And I wondered, 'What if he rapes me?' Would I walk miles back home, clothes torn, blood dripping onto my calves, tears of black caught in my laugh lines? Would those laugh lines be brand new or forever constrained? Would I be a different person, shamed and plagued? Or would it be a pleasant end to a fantastic day?