I am not the first person you loved. You are not the first person I looked at with a mouthful of forevers. We have both known loss like the sharp edges of a knife. We have both lived with lips more scar tissue than skin. Our love came unannounced in the middle of the night. Our love came when we’d given up on asking love to come. I think that has to be part of its miracle. This is how we heal. I will kiss you like forgiveness. You will hold me like I’m hope. Our arms will bandage and we will press promises between us like flowers in a book. I will write sonnets to the salt of sweat on your skin. I will write novels to the scar of your nose. I will write a dictionary of all the words I have used trying to describe the way it feels to have finally, finally found you.
And I will not be afraid of your scars.
I know sometimes it’s still hard to let me see you in all your cracked perfection, but please know: whether it’s the days you burn more brilliant than the sun or the nights you collapse into my lap your body broken into a thousand questions, you are the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. I will love you when you are a still day. I will love you when you are a hurricane.
A big thank you for a lesson plan idea - my students had a carp of a time (this is Czecho so carps are closer to home than whales) speculating, arguing and googling out!
Ian Stone, Doubting Thomas, oil on linen, 12x16 in, 2023
“If you know the painting by Caravaggio, Doubting Thomas, it was my direct inspiration for this piece.
A doubting Thomas is a skeptic who refuses to believe without direct personal experience. 50-60 years ago, it was not uncommon for people to think or believe that being gay was a phase or a mental illness or deviance in some shape or form. It’s embarrassing that the same things are being said about trans people today.”
Obediently you lay down across my lap, your weight a comforting assurance of your compliance.
I rest one hand on your head, a slow caress of your hair, the other smoothing out your dress over your hips and arse.
It’s good to be prim and proper before we begin.
With slow care, I pull the hem of your dress up over your hips. Again I smooth over the pretty lace beneath. Not because it needs it, but I want you to know I appreciate the choice you made.
With equal thought I peel your knickers down over the sweet curve of your backside. Just enough to expose what I need, but enough left you can feel the shame of them wrapped around your thighs.
I wait with one hand just resting on the warm expectant buttock. The other caresses your waist, tightly reassuring you that you’ll be here for some time.
Small circles begin the moment, gentle sweeps over the glorious flesh given to me to care for. As my palm makes its meandering rotations, your hips imperceptibly mirror it’s movements. The need building in your mind, seeping out across your body.
Around and around my hand travels, hypnotised shifts in your hips follow. Both of us lost in the connection of the caress.
The slap is sudden, waking you from the reverie. Another cracks behind it. One more reddens your cheek just right.
My hand returns to its caring touch. The skin warmer now. More sensitive. Your subtle hip grinds just that little bit more needy.
And so we will go on, as I continue to apply my caring touch until you are the mewling greedy thankful mess you asked to be.
a lot of newer vampire media has abandoned “can’t stand sunlight” as too cheesy or too big of a limitation but it’s good it’s so good i forgot how good it is. vampirism comes at an immense cost it’s both eternal freedom and eternal confinement its unending vigor and beauty is a thin veil over the brittleness of something already dead!!!! fuck yeaaaaaah!!!!!!!!!
