I shut myself in the ale house shed, daylight drawing to a close.
All day long, my breath has been short, choked off somewhere high in my throat. He's been gone twelve nights.
I miss him in a tight, breathless way. I'm anxious. I'm jumpy. I wonder if that was it. Whether that's all I'll ever get and I'll never understand any of it.
Why me. Why now. Why he did it the way he did.
The number of things I still want would spill out of my cupped hands; it could fill a canyon.
I want to see his bare chest.
I want to feel his mouth on my breasts again, licking the peaks, biting.
I want the sound of his relieved exhale when he finds his pleasure in me.
I want his eyes on mine, his lips right up against mine: closed, then opening together.
Between my legs I ache.
I close my eyes, lifting my skirts and reaching beneath my undergarments.
I am slippery and swollen, feeling heavy in the way I had when he'd entered me so easily.
I only want to touch, to feel what he would feel if he ever put his fingers to me, but one touch turns into another and each eases into a stroke and finally I am rocking into my hand, overcome with a sensation so enormous it feels like birth and death in immediate succession.
His face stays in my thoughts long into the night and I barely sleep.
When he returns, he will be promised to another.
Life will go on. I will marry. Life will go on.