The second time I fall in love with Bella, it is some months later, a Thursday, in the middle of the afternoon. She is almost late for a shift at Bean Me Up, the hole-in-the-wall coffee shop in which she spends twenty hours a week serving espresso to theater students and ironically named coffee concoctions to confused patrons ("Yes, sir, we can add non-fat almond milk to that Obi-Wan Arabica for you. No problem at all!").

I am lounging on my bed, covered by a thin sheet and still smelling so sweetly of her. Her taste is smooth and saccharine and settling gently on my tongue as I watch her quickly and efficiently apply a thin layer of cosmetics onto her bare face. Etta James belting out the second verse of I'd Rather Go Blind croons softly from the beat-up record player I was loath to part with after over forty years.

She wears a peach slip, a lacy, silky thing that drives me completely out of control. As she piles her braids high atop her head, I imagine pulling them tightly in my fist, just like she likes. Her eyes meet mine in the mirror and I wonder what she sees there.

I am burning inside, hotter and brighter than the Great Chicago Fire.

The Love of My Man trills after a snick and a gentle scratch. Bella grins and her cherry-soft lips part and mouth the uncannily perceptive lyrics of Ed Townsend. Her generous hips and gently sloped shoulders shimmy sweetly.

I am taken with her, by her.

I want to always be near her, and it's getting harder to avoid the possessive, savage direction my thoughts always lead. When I'm not inside of her, I long to be — my body, my fingers, my teeth.

I imagine her with gold eyes and pretty fang-tipped canines vulgarly peeking from her lips.

"You'd better not look at me like that, or I'll be late again," her bell-toned voice warbles, tongue-in-cheek and always finding ways to make me smile.

My cheeks ache with the magnitude of it, with the power of each and every grin that has graced my mouth since meeting her. When the corners of my lips quirk, I don't dwell on the phantom twinge of pain in the crooked bridge of my nose, ruddy images of my father's fists curled and quivering no longer hurtling through my mind.

I am done with that. Those memories, though stamped in my faulty brain, don't have a place here with her. Like Soteria, she covers me with a veil of protection, her aegis my father's head staring ahead with unseeing eyes. Such images are disturbingly comforting to me and I wonder, not for the last time, what happened to me all those years ago. My heart aches for the boy who longed for the softness of ivory keys under his fingers, even as they bled and throbbed from the crush of the piano fallboard (one of his punishments, customary and predictable though no less painful).

I laid the memory at her feet one night and as she held me and recited a poem about a baby birch I felt freer than I'd ever dared to feel.

"That would be a damned shame." My voice is a terrible, rasping thing. I inch nearer to her, my shoulders automatically shifting into a prowler's mien. My control is leaps and bounds stronger than the first terrifying, exhilarating, gut-wrenching time we were together. Play like this is second nature, and the hitch in her heartbeat is almost as good as her hot sigh in my ear.

Later, as the door slams shut in the wake of her breathless laughter, I marvel at the weightlessness she has left me with. I feel like Frankenstein's creature, my body full to bursting with disbelief that someone could ever love me.

Bella knows me.


A breath feels my skin

A thrill burnt into my blood

The mirror reflecting all my fear

I fall with you

Times and dreams are over

The devils of hell, open their doors

I almost get jealous when Bella recites her poetry. A selfish, childish part of me wants her innermost thoughts, desires, and emotions to stay between the two of us. It would be an incredible disservice to the world, depriving them of her.

I am, as ever, working on my covetous nature.

Even here, at Bean Me Up's weekly poetry slam, patrons and fellow writers alike are riveted, hanging onto her every word. On the makeshift stage, an aura of blue light hovers around her head, braids tied loosely at the top of her head. She has never appeared more dangerous to me, and I am speechless.

My chest twinges with a sluggish heartbeat. Blood pumps hot and wet inside my veins. Bella doesn't just know me.

She owns me.

Thoughts around me pulse and flow in varied appreciation of not only Bella's poetry, but her beauty and energy as well. Her body, her passion, her sensuality — I am enraptured.


"The love of the body of man or woman balks account, the body itself balks account. That of the male is perfect, and that of the female is…"

She has a habit of distracting me. The simplest task — preparing tea for the two of us — fills my mind with static and I am all hindbrain. Whitman is forgotten for delicate tanned hands and the tender swell of hips through flannel pajamas. My primal brain, which I have begun to realize is still absurdly reptilian in nature, sees her bent over the kitchen counter, my hands holding her wrists against the cold kitchen sink.

Bella turns and looks at me expectantly.

"Uh…" I shake my head, clear my throat, look down at the well-read and worn book. "...the sprawl and fullness of babes, the bosoms and heads of women, the folds of their dress, their style as we pass in the street, the contour of their shape downwards—"

Her jingling laugh makes me pause again, a sheepish, toothy smile at my lips, goofy and silly and I-don't-care-what-else. I love this woman.

"You skipped ahead."

At times it is unfortunate that I can blush again. It is slight, a barely-there rose heat creeping up my neck.

But she notices. She always notices.

fin.


I'd Rather Go Blind - Etta James

The Love of My Man - Etta James

The Beast - Old Caltone

I Sing the Body Electric - Walt Whitman