mind body mama: Whatever happens

Adrienne Rich wrote very specifically (some said “graphically”) about making love with a woman.  She wrote of body parts, of sight and touch.  The immutability of transient physical experience:

This happened.

This was.

There are women’s bodies I have known as well as the bodies of my lovers. 

There are women’s bodies I have known better.

I have known the fake and the fist and the follow through.

I have known the hanging lock, the thumb lock, the kotegaishi.  On a small hand, a larger hand, a hand with callouses, nails dark with grease. I have known exactly how far one wrist, one shoulder must be pushed to cause pain.  And how differently far another.

I have known the snap of tendons over a joint not my own.  I have known the tang of sweat in the clinch, the heaviness of a leg in the partner stretch, the breeze from a kick that kissed my cheek.

I have known how she leaves the ground with both feet as she spars, knees high like a step dancer.

I have known knees, insteps, hands in my groin.  I have known the smell of breath, armpits, hair, skin.  I have put my foot to her foot, knee to her knee, hip to her hip, palm to her collarbone, hand between her thighs. I have stepped under her, bent my knees, lifted her onto my shoulders. 

I have felt my elbow pulled like a wishbone in her hands.

I have taken a kick to the kidney, elbow to the nose, punch to the face, my brain concussed in its bony cage.  I have been sore the next day, bruised the next day, unable to bend, run, work, find my way out of the subway.

I have closed my forearm against her windpipe, pulled her hair against my face. I have put my hands around her throat. I have buried my hand in her soft buzz cut, grasped a handful of curls crisp with hairspray, closed my fist around her shiny ponytail.  

I have felt the mat on my back and her hips on my abdomen, hands pinning my wrists. 

I have known the rhythm of sticks like handclap games, disarmed the rubber knife, swung the bo staff. 

I have known the patterns like dance and a roomful of bodies moving in unison.  I have known the black canvas uniform sodden with sweat. 

I have known the bodies of women not with words or sight but in the shape of my body against them, our muscles straining together.  I have known a wordless sisterhood of study and struggle. Our bodies have made the same movements.  My bloodstream is freighted with the memory of their touch.

Whatever happens, this is.