Neighbor girl

A love note

I'm falling, fallen, for a neighbor girl. When I close my eyes she's all I see. When I'm not, I'm wishing that I were.

I can't get her off my mind.

Right now the frogs are croaking, cloaking the night in their crusade against silence in the name of love.

I relate. All I can see is her. All I can feel is her. I can still feel her on my hands, tingling against her touch. We've been trysting in the woods whenever it's not raining and when it rains I stand at the window waiting for it to stop. Sometimes we don't wait, and we kiss, wet and a little miserable in the cold damp rain. I can't get enough, even then.

I close my eyes and I see her there, poking her head up from under a fern, or lying next to the stream beside blackberry and cleavers, and looking at me with those comehither green eyes.

I’ll remember taking her hair in my hands and snipping, squatting above her, she wants it short so she has room to grow.

I'll consider the image edged into my mind. Sitting by that little creek in her slight green dress, naked beneath it, edging me to cut it off her, biting me when I try. Laughing at my pain until it turns to pleasure and I have her earthy taste in my mouth. I love her taste. I taste her remembering - like goat cheese, raw and wild.

I'll refer to her words written in sharpie on my fingertips. Refrains of respect, poems written to the spring. I'm singing too, froglike in my exultation at her return. She's not around in the winter and I missed her.

I know her kind and I've loved every incarnation. I've loved her sisters in Olympia. Always demanding respect, until when it is given she, turns generous, endlessly giving of herself. I love every version of her for that generosity.

When we were little I used to hate her. The violent girl who would never let me near. I used to hit her with sticks and she'd retaliate viciously until I'd cry. I wanted her gone from my life.

It was Mama who sent me out to invite her in for dinner. I squatted beside her, looked down at her, lying on the ground, dress still tattered from I'd hit her, and asked. She said yes, and I started to understand a little then.

It was that day in Olympia with her sister that really changed everything though. The day I asked her to hurt me, went into our relationship without avoiding pain, embracing the sadism in her and the masochism in me.

She hurt me, I couldn't pick up a spoon for days, but after that our relationship changed. She stopped hurting me at all, and instead started telling me about herself, opening where she had never been open before.

This neighbor girl, who stands, green dress rippling in the breeze, bare feet set solidly into the ground, has picked up our relationship right where we left off. Respect. We marvel in how much we have in common. We both get turned on by rich dark soil. We both like the edges of forests and the places along roads. We both like playing with our feet in the water. We both love boundaries.

I love her for the way she talks to me. No nonsense. I love her for not disguising her earthy nature. I love her for getting me out into the wilds. I love her for hiding from me. I love her for revealing herself. I love her for giving me magic. I love her for helping me use my own.

I love her, simple as that. Falling, fallen, as I never have for a woman.

She thrills me, from fingertips to belly, I find myself repeating her hot Latino name under my breath as I walk. Urtica Dioica.

My sweet Stinging Nettle.