Lady Chatterley: A Modern Portrait

My bare feet burrowed into the velveteen grass, and an apple — red, and ripe — cradled in my palm. I sink my teeth through its skin and feel the enlightenment spread from node to node. Food for thought.

But knowledge is not all I savour. There is the flesh, too — tender-crisp, sweet, and tart. A complex pleasure whose taste I crave.

This is what I’ve learned here, under tangled branches in the wild, my lips pressed into the hollow of his throat: Mind without body can sustain neither life nor love.

I’ve known them, the ones who have engaged my intellect, all the while frightened by my voracious carnality.

I’ve known, too, the ones who long to rip into my flesh with no desire to penetrate my thinking self.

And I’m done now settling for the former and making justifications for the latter.

I need him to crave my matters both pink and grey, to desire my effable and ineffable, to make my skin scream at the same time my mind sings. Only then can he venture into the space between my cells, to know me to my edges. To voyage with me beyond them, and his.

Anything less leaves me in pieces.

And I am a woman who chooses to be,

who demands to be,

loved as

whole.