This Is How We Make Love

This is how we make love:
Sitting beside each other on the sofa
Reading poetry aloud
Each syllable in our mouths
Full of all the emotion hidden in the
Black letters
The white pages of our books
Like sheets
Between which our limbs entwine,
And our mouths,
Full of all the emotion hidden in our hearts.

We take turns
Giving each other pleasure
The spoken words like caresses
The rise and fall of our voices
The pauses pregnant
The feelings unfettered
Dashes of desire
Semicolons of seduction

Every ellipsis is a sigh
His voice quavers and breaks
With unsuppressed emotion
I melt against the upholstery
Words washing over my languid legs
My dampening palms
Slick against the hard spine
Of the book

This is how we make love
Embracing every author’s passion
And making it ours

*****

Image: “Woman Reading on a Settee” by William Worchester Churchill courtesy of The Athenaeum