Tastebuds and Tantalization

I woke from a dream this morning...the sweat from the heat of it collected between my shoulder blades.

It reminded me of how consumption and taste are such transverse expressions..I think being a connoisseur of food, of exploring taste and the complexity of the palate, I've come to learn that taste can be a way of exploring someone's body, a lover, the self...a way of learning something about the body and sexuality that words sometimes cannot convey.

But I tried anyway...c'est la vie of a writer I suppose.

*

After the salt from another’s tongue and mouth have faded from the moist part of my lips and the insides of my cheeks, the taste is replaced by the bitterness of red wine that stains the same places of my moth that he explored. The alcohol leaves a dull burn of passion and solitude from my years when it mixes with tears as they slide down my face and in between my parted lips. Licking them away with my tongue, I taste the questions that are bursting inside of me, bubbling into my throat.

Dissolving like salt in water.

The way he feels on my tongue reminds me of nighttime after a storm. Dark and musky, pungent as an aftertaste.

A kind of sensuous, sumptuousness with using all part of the mouth to taste him.

The body becomes a map, a sequence of trails and destinations that my lips explore, that my tongue uses to journey from one place on his body to the next.

How foreign flesh feels on my palate, to detect the crook of his arm, or the dip in his waist, the space between his fingers, where suggestions of pine and freshly cut grass, maple syrup and a hint of pepper, sometimes unsweetened chocolate, or the brine and honey of sweat on his collar bone.

I taste him between sweetness of my own fingers, like morning oatmeal with brown sugar, how it mixes with the smell of herbs on my wrist from my perfume. Cappuccinos have a way with my mouth; the foam from the froth of milk is left in the empty spaces of the cup when the liquid is finished off. I drink them slowly, with patience and suggestion, take note of the warm liquid down my throat. Once the milky brown espresso and milk are gone, remnants of subtle, sweet, milk neglected in the bottom of the cup. The tips of my fingers scoop up the froth remaining on the circumference of the vestibule and before placing the weightless substance onto my palate I remember how I’ve tasted his fingers in the same way, a methodical, sensual motion, breathing hot breath onto the back of his hand then taking his fingertips in between my parted lips.