Intimacy & Longing

What is the distance between intimacy and longing? Is it desire or creative tension? Is it redemption or fiction? He had become such a part of her that when she slept, she dreamt of him; when she spoke, she felt him listen; when she hurt, she imagined him making love to the pain, transforming it into gold, freedom, gratitude for being. The very breath in her lungs felt like his presence. She was torn between wonder at her own capacity for such reeling and fear that it would overwhelm him like a wave of need and vulnerability so raw and potent that it made one feel like they were being saved, or drowning. Where is the line between devotion and obsession, between comfort and stagnation, between healing and grieving, between guidance and dependency, between fantasy and rejoicing? Was the abundance that made her a woman something to be ashamed of or to be held in perspective? Control and trust were like soft beasts with teeth, and when he laid his head against her breasts, the world became whole for a moment, for an infinity. The yogis art is that of embracing the energy of the earth while communing with the cosmos, but when the girl-heart is ignited, then he is the universe, and she is the kiss of the psyche the womb of creation and the creation of the womb.

By Sofiya Hyder