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His Fingers Through My Hair Are the Pleasure Equivalent to a Nuclear Bomb
My arsenal has no tools to counteract this onslaught
I wasn’t prepared for the explosion of his body in my life.
It didn’t happen all at once.
Rather, it was a slow, gentle teasing that began with words: hundreds of thousands of words that gently prodded the outer edges of our minds, then worked their way inward, further and further until nothing was left untouched.
We lived seven thousand miles apart: he in Idaho and me in Nigeria, and met through an online writing community, having instantly noticed the quality of the other’s writing. Within weeks, we’d swapped manuscripts and begun tearing each other’s work to shreds in the way only two writers who truly respect one another can.
Nothing but words and professionalism flew, sparks of creativity and the dire, painful circumstances of the stories we shared.
We hashed and slogged and it was like exploring the insides of someone’s body the way kids in science cartoons board spaceships to travel through blood vessels like dark, red tunnels.
We obliterated one another, there was nothing left unseen and so, without knowing face or skin or touch or anything else, we were naked, constantly…
