Before the tides shift

You feel for it first in the dark – this and then than, before it all gets hard and you can’t stop what happens next.

The surge of blood through my head and I stop thinking about anything else, a reckless deep sea diver seeking the treasure buried in the deeps.

In the dark, eyes don’t help at all, and you must rely on your fingers to feel the place where it all erupts.

But it rarely starts there, always first with something more accessible, the soft touch of lips and then later, if I’m lucky hips.

It’s never about conquest with me the way it is with others.

I just like the feel of it, the lingering of lips and then the tips of tongues, that first intrusion into the unknown – I remember my first kiss and who it was with, though I didn’t get anywhere near the buried treasure.

Still even then, I felt every bit a pirate, stealing something to treasure then and later.

It’s always like that – especially in the dark where I have to let my fingers go where my eyes can’t, over the curved surface most easily mounted, and later, into the warm, moist world sunken so deep it takes more than a finger to get to it completely.

It’s not always possible to get more, and so later, I get to think about the touch of it, the moist feel of where the fingers went, and the taste of it, when I’m lucky to get that far.

In the dark, where the real treasures lie, sometimes I have to be a pirate, taking what I can get before the tides shift, and I’m washed back out to sea.