Grip Kennedy Ryan Quotes

And when the years have passed, and we have watched a thousand sunsets, and we are bent, our bodies crooked with age ask me again. In the twilight, in the shadow of the life we have shared, ask me if I love you, and my heart will answer before my lips can part. My love, my life, my heart never left your hands. Always, evermore, even after. Still.

Still?” she asks with a watery smile. “Yeah.” Always. Evermore. Even after. “Still.

I like the color of smart, the shade of funny, and sexy is my favorite hue.

Ask me when your belly is full like the moon, and our love has stretched your body with my child, leaving your skin, once flawless, now silvered, traced, scarred, I will worship you. My eyes will never stray. My heart will never wander, gladly leashed to you all my days. I am fixed on you.

Don’t you feel how connected we are?” I ask. “If I break your heart, I break mine.” A sweet smile spreads over her lips and she nods.

Dwell in possibility.

I love your body because it has you in it.

We both gave each other space to be misunderstood, because we really wanted to understand.

Our grandfathers had to run, run, run. My generation’s out of breath. We ain’t running no more.

We just tiptoe around things, afraid we’ll offend or look ignorant, be misunderstood. Honesty is a risk few are willing to take.

There’s something helpless about truly being in love, the kind of love they write songs about, that inspires poetry and launches ships and wreaks havoc. It leaves you slightly off balance, controlling when you mean to cherish, smothering when you mean to hold close.

He’s dictating my heartbeat, governing my pulse, holding my next breath cupped in his hands.

However imperfect she appears to some, she is ours, and we already love her deeply and will treasure any time we have with her.

I’ll never forget this moment when, through the abject fear and despair and exhaustion saturating her eyes, I glimpse her trust in me. It’s the greatest gift I’ve ever received.

And it still isn’t enough. Anything that ended would never be enough for a love like ours. A love like ours is only satisfied by forever.

But we are sometimes in the most danger when we let our guards down, when we let peace deceive us and trick us into forgetting.

I come here with my heart bleeding on my sleeve, and it's still not enough for him. He needs me to cut it out and hand it to him in chunks of flesh and blood.

So what color am I then?” I ask before thinking better of it. He’ll probably just say I’m white, obviously. “What color are you?” he repeats, his eyes never leaving my face. “You, Bristol, are a freaking prism.

When I thought of my husband, I didn’t dream in color, I dreamt in character.

We splinter into a thousand pieces in her kitchen, becoming more together than we were apart. More than we were alone. With whispered promises and words of love, we exchange hearts.

She’s something rare—smart, classy, gorgeous, funny, opinionated, and under it all, where she tries to hide it, kind. And burrowed beneath all of that, vulnerable. She isn’t the kind of girl you mess over.

Dude had serious game.” Grip laughs. “No one writes about love and sex and passion like Neruda.

But it’s such a rich white,” I say, forcing my lips to stay curved. “Well, this is Tribeca,” Grip deadpans. “There’s bound to be a lot of rich whites.

I will kiss him a million times in our life together and never tire of it. My lips will always cling, curious and searching. His touch is an endless thrill.

He studies me a moment longer, and the intimacy and openness are almost too much, but I force myself not to look away. I’ve never been more vulnerable to anyone, and I’ve never trusted anyone else the way I trust Grip— with my life, with my heart.

Art, specifically music, is a living thing,” he says. “It isn’t just absorbed by the people who hear it, but it absorbs them.

When we are alone, you and I, through years, through pain, my heart will answer again and again, still.

Every time I’m near her I want to pour accelerant all over my anger so it burns us both to ash.

We feel the things we need to know instead of say them. With my chest pressed to his back, forgiveness, love, understanding, and tenderness transfer noiselessly between the layers of our clothes, an emotional osmosis through blood and bone, through hurt and fear.

I look at her, cataloging her features one by one and realizing the most fascinating thing about this girl isn’t visible to the naked eye.

I bet your leg has gone to sleep.” “Not my third leg.

Grief handed me a heart of iron, and I rusted it with my tears, a muscle not made of flesh, not pumping blood.

Marlon James, you better fix her.” It takes the rest of the day to reprogram Nina...

In the words of that great comedic philosopher Kevin Hart, “We gon’ learn today!

She looks like me,” he says. “I told you we’re twins. Lemme check the Cloud for a picture.” Did

When other people are as outraged and as curious about those problems as black people are,” he says. “Then maybe we can solve them together.

I warned you that I'm not like other girls. I don't have those limits. I'd do anything for you. It sounds romantic until it crosses your lines, huh? Until it goes too far.

What color are you?” he repeats, his eyes never leaving my face. “You, Bristol, are a freaking prism.

But if you don’t ride me hard enough, I’m flipping you over and tearing that ass up. Got it?” “That sounds fair.” I nod frantically, no breath left for banter. I’m just ready to impale myself on him.

If you’ve heard shots as many times as we have, if you live with it, you know the sound a gun makes when it’s fired is a moan. The moan of a mother, a father, a daughter, or son losing someone they love.

Electric current spears me down the middle, landing in my core. He sucks all the oxygen from the room, and my lungs desperately push breath from my chest. He studies me under hooded lids, knowing exactly what he’s doing to me.

Oh, I want you.” Lust roughens his voice. Love makes it soft. His gaze drops, a lazy, heated sweep over my body, a sweet searing of my skin. The look is as heavy as a stroking hand, but so gentle that I barely feel its tantalizing weight.

Her kiss woos me in the water. Her fingers on my skin are poetry. Her lips, prose. The rhythm of her heart against mine, iambic. Every touch, eloquence.

What should be foreign feels familiar.

I guess to me, we have enough that divides us and makes us misunderstand each other. Do we really need one more thing we can’t agree on?

You’re not asking the wrong question. Is it the most important question, though?

Let’s get some outrage over people of color getting longer sentences for the same crimes other people commit.

Life is the grand equalizer. It has a way of stripping those privileges, rendering them inconsequential.

I’m so ready, Bristol could breathe on me and I’d probably come all over her.

We don’t “emancipate” where I come from. Nah. We keep shit simple and just never come home.

My waters rise, and like a river bursting free of its banks, I overflow.

With whispered promises and words of love, we exchange hearts.

I don’t know if it’s mine or if it’s hers, but this moment, this perfect glass-blown moment where our bodies unite and our souls intersect, this moment belongs to us.

I have no pride when it comes to you, to this. I’ll chase you anywhere.

What if he decides someday the one thing he really wants, really needs is the one thing I can never be?

The music is sensuous and whispers sex before the singer delivers the first lyric. “Prince?” I ask, surprised. I recognize the iconic voice, but not the song. “What is this?” “Adore.

Emotion tells you about love, but hard times prove it. How can you know something is great unless it’s tested? Until then, it’s just an assumption. It’s a question, but life has a way of answering.

I withhold nothing from him. Not my body—he can have it any way he wants it. Not my heart—flung open like a door for him to walk through. Not my soul—twisting around his every time he hammers up into me, possessing me from the inside out.

I will worship you,” I remind her, taking her hand and tracing the letters tattooed beneath her wedding band, linking our fingers, showing her the ink beneath mine. “Still?” she asks with a watery smile. “Yeah.” Always. Evermore. Even after. “Still.

But I want to hear the same dismay and curiosity,” he continues, his smile leveling out. “About the issues that are actually eroding our communities. Let’s ask why black men are six percent of the general population and nearly forty percent of the prison population.

You ask me today if I love you, if I take you as my own to have and to hold, and my heart replies yes. Always, evermore, even after. Still. Not just today before a crowd, but when we are alone, you and I, through years, through pain, My heart will answer again and again, still.

There are too few perfect moments in this life. Far too few of us get them, but I am privileged to have this one with this man. When he empties his chest of his heart and empties his body of his soul for me under a starry sky on a Ferris wheel. And I know. In this moment, I know that I’m lost to him. It has been a matter of days. It has been a string of moments. It has not been long enough to tell him, but in my heart, I know I am lost.

Thank you, Bris. God, I’ve missed you so much. I love you,” he whispers over my lips, sending his tongue in to taste me. “I can’t stop touching you. I thought I might lose . . .” His voice breaks. He buries his head in my neck, and I feel his tears mingling with the sweat sheening my body. He reaches up, looking at me with wet eyes, and brushes away the tears I didn’t realize were streaming over my cheeks, too. “We made it.” He smiles at me, eyes tender. “I told you we could survive anything together.” He never doubted us. When I wasn’t sure I could make it, when I couldn’t find my way out of the darkness entombing me, he came for me. “Don’t ever tell me not to save you,” I say, tears rolling between my naked breasts and over the gold that binds our hearts together. “You saved me, Grip. You came for me.

I may not want a relationship, but I’m not blind or dead south of the waist. My heart, though, last time I checked, was north of my belt. I don’t let anyone near that thing.

When they should start . . .” His hand glides up and over my belly and between my breasts. Over the curve of my shoulder and neck until he reaches his destination. He finally taps my temple three times. “Here. They should start here and work their way down because your mind is your most erogenous zone, Bris. I look forward to making you come with my words alone.

If you’ve heard shots as many times as we have, if you live with it, you know the sound a gun makes when it’s fired is a moan. The moan of a mother, a father, a daughter, or son losing someone they love. It’s the sound Jade makes when she runs to my window, her eyes scanning the front yard for both of her brothers. We find them there together. Chaz’s lifeless head rests in Greg’s lap on the patch of grass. Greg’s face crumples, the brows bent with pain, his mouth stretched wide on a wail. He’s covered in the blood spurting life from his brother’s chest.

I can’t move. My shoes stick to the thin, cheap carpet in my bedroom. The smell of death invades my nose like an enemy, and my heart trills in my chest, hammering a rapid beat. My breath wheezes from my throat, and my head spins. I grasp for consciousness, searching for the words that calmed me moments ago. Moments before a bullet split our world right down the middle. I mumble the final lines of “Harlem,” even though I’m the only one listening, and I reach the same conclusion Hughes does. So here in these streets, in my neighborhood, what happens to a dream deferred? It explodes.

I fell for her before the beat dropped. Between the verses and After rehearsal and In sixteen bars I was intoxicated After sixteen bars, me and her was faded Had our first kiss on a Ferris wheel We was on top of the world. I’m on top of the world (When I love her) Top of the World (When I hate her) Top of the world (When I take her or leave her) With her I’m on the top of the world I roll her up tight in my blunt paper Inhale her like smoke, in my lungs she’s a vapor ‘Cause she always on the run Making me hunt, making me chase Making me run like it’s a race Making me work like it’s my job Even when she bottom she come out on top She be on top of the world I’m on top of the world (When I love her) Top of the World (When I hate her) Top of the world (When I take her or leave her) With her I’m on the top of the world

What the hell are you talking about?” Genuine confusion clouds his expression. “When did you ever kiss Bristol at the top of a Ferris wheel? Is that like a metaphor?” “No. Dude, I literally kissed your sister at the top of the Ferris wheel.

THE FIRST TIME I saw Grip perform, I literally almost came.

I’m losing the grasp on my patience the longer I have to defend my feelings for Bristol, since they won’t be doing me any good anyway. “I didn’t fall for her because she’s white. I fell for her because she’s . . . Bristol.

I’M NOT SURE how much more my ovaries can endure today. As if Grip looking the way he does isn’t enough, seeing him inspire these kids from his old high school is like a stick of C4 planted in my ovaries. Boom.

It’s my next single, and I hope the lyrics speak for themselves. I hope they speak up for the kids in my neighborhood who get pulled over for nothing or whose dignity is dinged and chipped from the time they understand what those flashing blue lights mean. I hope my words rise up on behalf of my cousin Greg and other cops who put themselves in the line of fire every day, running toward the dangers the rest of us flee. I hope this song is a dirge for lives lost on both sides of a debate that has divided us, when we should unite. I hope this song is common ground.

I mean, yeah. I was happy, excited for the album, but you know what my mind kept going back to?” “What?” My voice is hushed, my heart waiting. “Our first kiss.” A smile crooks the corner of his full lips. “That night at the carnival, no one knew who I was. My bank account was sad. Not one of my dreams had come true yet, but I had you. That night I had you, and it was the best night of my life. And the night of the party, when I thought you might marry Parker, that we might not ever get back to what we started on that Ferris wheel, I could barely focus on the songs. That let me know what is the most important thing to me, and it ain’t sales.

Bristol,” Qwest says, causing me to turn at the door. “You’re a very lucky woman. Any woman, Black, white whatever would be lucky to have a man like Grip.” I don’t think anything I could say would be the right thing, could ease the pain I see behind her eyes, so I just nod and close the door behind me. But in my heart, despite all the crap we’ve waded through over the last few days, I agree. I just might be the luckiest girl in the world.

Bristol, are you with both of them?” another reporter asks. I ignore the horrible question, but Grip turns in the direction of the reporter, glaring, his hand still holding mine, tightening around mine. “What did you ask her?” His voice, a dark growl, has the reporter looking like a mouse caged with a snake. “Does it look like she’s with him? She’s with me.

I know I’m overreacting.” He sighs, tipping his head back and studying the chandeliers dotting the high ceilings. “I just hate that anyone would even think he has a claim on you.” “Hey, from their perspective, it was a blur.” I take both of his hands in mine. “All of this—you and Qwest, me and Parker—it’s all really tangled in their heads. They don’t know I’ve been in love with you for years.” His eyes soften, like I knew they would, and he laughs, cupping my neck. “You think you can charm your way out of that hard fuck you have coming tonight, don’t you?” “When have I ever run from a hard fuck?” My voice comes out low and sultry, my smile slow and only for him. “I’m earning it.

Thank you, baby.” Grip leans down to my ear, his voice dark and dirty. “Knowing you are naked under that dress has been driving me crazy all night. The napkin was barely big enough to hide my hard-on.

Just hurry up.” He turns me toward the door and swats my bottom. “So I can keep my promise.

Actually, I do. Your son and I have been best friends for over fifteen years.” He pauses. “And I’m going to marry your daughter one day.

Grip.” Bristol bends over the rail up on the landing. Her dark hair hangs a little wild and completely free down her back. She rushes down the stairs and hurls herself into my arms. I stumble back, laughing with an armful of my girl. God, yes. This. Parker can have his billions and his hotels and his helicopters. This is all I want. I squeeze Bristol so tightly our hearts converse through our clothes. I lean into her, sliding my hands down to her waist and kissing her. “Are you hungry?” she asks against my lips. She’s wearing a simple black dress with short sleeves. She’s barefoot and has on no makeup. I could eat her for dinner she looks so good. Or actual food and then just make love to her afterwards. I like that option even better. “Starving.” I peck her lips and squint toward the take out menus under magnets on the refrigerator. “We can order whatever you want, just make it fast.

No need to order.” Bristol pulls back, her eyes gleaming with anticipation. “I cooked.” So it wasn’t the garbage. “Um, why?” I pose the question cautiously because . . . why would she try to cook? That one good pot of chili hasn’t convinced me. “Grip.” She pouts her lips so prettily that I’d eat her shoe if she pulled it out of the oven. “I wanted to make something you’d enjoy after that long photo shoot. How was it by the way?” “It was great. I missed having you there, but Sarah did great.” “She did? Good. You were wrong for firing me. Of course, you were, but it made me realize that Sarah needs broader experiences. And if I don’t recruit some help, I’ll be working eighteen-hour days for the foreseeable future.” “The hell you will. Some of those hours are mine,” I mumble against her neck. “Not the neck.” Her husky protest is half-hearted at best as she arches her neck to give me easier access.

They’re not great, huh?” she asks. “They’re the worst,” I say before I can stop myself. We consider each other across the table and the steaming crap pile of collard greens and laugh together. She gets up and climbs into my lap, sliding her hand into my jeans pocket to get my cell phone. “Pizza?” She rests her forehead against my chin. “With every meat known to man and some that haven’t been FDA approved.” Once the pizza is ordered, she doesn’t leave my lap, which is fine with me.

You admired my necklace last night,” she says. “But you didn’t read the inscription.” I study her face while I lift the gold bar and turn it over. Etched into the gold is the inscription “My heart broke loose on the wind.” For a second, the space of a heartbeat, I can’t breathe. This means so much to me I literally cannot breathe. “When did you get this?” My voice is hushed, reverent with the thought of what that night on the Ferris wheel must have meant to her, too. “Months ago.” She cups one side of my face. “We didn’t even seem to be a possibility when I ordered this.” “But why . . . even then?” Months ago, Bristol was deep freezing me, so it’s hard to imagine that night was on her mind then. That I was on her mind then. “Even if we hadn’t gotten together, I was still going to wear this next to my heart because I knew I would never love anyone else that way.” She shakes her head, eyes bright with conviction. “Not the way I felt that night. That night was awesome, magical, but it was just a glimpse of the man you would become. And I knew even if I couldn’t have you, I’d carry this piece of you with me. This piece of your prophecy.” That poem inspired me in a way I have only ever put into words for one person. The woman sitting in my lap. The woman who has held my heart for years when I wasn’t sure she even wanted it. And the whole time, this night, these moments, burned in her memory like they did mine. I’m torn between spreading her on the table and having my appetizer before the pizza arrives, or kissing her until she’s limp in my arms.

I love you,” I whisper, stepping back and giving up the warm safety of his arms. “There’s nothing . . . nothing I wouldn’t do for you.

I don’t want to. I want to spend the rest of my life feeling this way, like I’m only half alive when she isn’t here. There’s nowhere she could go I wouldn’t chase her. Have you ever felt that for anybody?” Shock rounds my mother’s eyes, and her fingers tremble against my chest. “No,” she whispers, her eyes searching my face. “I don’t think most people ever do.” “It’s painful.” A hefty sigh heaves from my chest. “It’s precious, though. I won’t give it up.

Put your dick away.” I injected pity in my voice. “How you ever thought that little bit of twig and berries would satisfy my girl, I don’t know.

Bristol has always watched me. I know because I was watching her, too. I observed her for years like an anthropologist untangling the mysteries of a new tribe. There’s something in her eyes when she watches me that isn’t there for anyone else. I was never sure what it was. Now I know. It’s a passion so wild there are no borders. A limit- less, loving fealty beyond what I could deserve. Not my music, not my money, not fame, or anything I dreamed would satisfy comes close to what I feel when she looks at me like that. She feathers kisses over my lips, down my neck. We start slow and tender, but every touch, every long, lush stroke of our tongues together tosses kindling on this kiss until we’re grunting and hungry.

Oh, she missed me.” I grin and invade her with two fingers. Bristol's breath catches in her throat, and she squeezes her top lip between her teeth. “Did you just personify my pussy?” She laughs in between hitched breaths. “I am a writer." I dot kisses under her chin and any reachable skin. "Take it as a sign of respect.” “I’ll take this.” She grabs my bone-hard, stretched-out dick. “As a sign of respect.

Our bodies are lock and key, and we’re transfixed on each other. Inseparable. Insoluble. I seize her tongue, pulling her in, sucking her, wringing every drop of sweetness from the kiss. She whimpers, her hands clawing at my shoulders, my neck, scraping over my scalp. “I love you." Her words drop hot in my ear with her breasts flattened to my chest and her thighs clenching at my hips. She tightens her pussy around my cock, a deliberate, hungry grasp and release. "Bris.” My eyes roll back. I'm at the mercy of those muscles. "I love you, too." She tucks her head into the curve of my neck, her breaths short and sharp as she recites from “Sonnet LXXXI”, telling me I’m already hers, to rest with my dream inside her dream, that we are joined by forever itself, and that we’ll travel the shadows together. She pants, sitting up straighter, leveraging herself with one arm behind her on the bed, changing the angle, deepening the penetration. In the lamp's light, I see her head flung back in abandon, her muscles straining with the unrelenting ferocity, the rigor of our bodies. “You alone are my dream,” she says, adapting the quote, tears in the eyes she refuses to pull away from me. “And I alone am yours.” It is a pledge of persistence, hidden in the poems I sent her. It’s a vow that she won’t ever give up on us. Knowing she held the poetry in her heart when she wouldn't even consider me, when I wasn’t even sure there was any hope, undoes me. “Bristol, oh God." I touch my forehead to hers, twisting my fingers into the damp hair at her neck. Pressed together, our heartbeats ricocheting, the universe tips, a dazzling lurching. A spectacular axis spinning beyond my restraint, just beyond my control. I once threatened to make her come with my words, but as the stars go blindingly bright and then dark behind my eyes, I realize she’s the one who did it.

I grew up in the part of the world that gave rise to the Watts riots and Rodney King. I was five years old when Rodney King was beaten.” He gives a quick laugh. “I barely knew my name, but I knew his. He was a cautionary tale for us, and our mothers made sure we knew.

I’m here because the system needs radical reform. Unarmed men and women are dying. And there are cops who, if they don’t do it, see it and remain silent. Do nothing, making them complicit.

I used to pray that God would send my son a fighter like me,” Ma continues. “A woman like me. I thought she would have to look like me, but that isn’t true. When I saw what you would do for my son, I knew God had answered my prayers in you. I’m just a stubborn old woman.

I’m the writer, but it seems like you always know what to say to me,” I tell her softly. “Is that so?” She kisses my chin and cups one side of my face. “I think you’re just sweet talking me now with all that . . . chocolate charm.” Haven’t heard that in a long time. I was a cocky son of a bitch back then. In many ways, I probably still am. “Oh, no.” I turn to kiss the inside of her wrist. “If I was spitting game, I’d say something like this. A storm could come, the winds will blow The rain can wash away But what we have will stand forever, to last another day. The world can rail, their weapons clatter Let them wage their wars But peace I’ve found, and all that matters Everything here in your arms.” “Wow,” Bristol whispers, eyes wide, mouth softened into a smile. “That isn’t Neruda, is it? Who wrote that?” I tip up her chin and lay my lips against hers. No need to tell her yet that it could be part of my wedding vows. “Just something I’m working on.

Me: Not funny. Get here so we can be done with this. Grip: I’m coming, but you know I come faster when you show me your tits.

And I was just about to say I have a boyfriend.” “I’m sure he’d understand.” Kevin flashes a conspiratorial wink Grip’s way. “I’m sure he wouldn’t.” A vein of steel runs through Grip’s good- natured response. “He doesn’t like her having dinner with other guys.” “What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him, eh?” Kevin leans forward slightly to elbow Grip’s arm. “Might get you hurt, though,” Grip says, elbowing Kevin back with a little more force. “Eh?” “Ow.” Kevin rubs his arm, frowning at the spot Grip poked roughly. This has gone on long enough. Every word out of Kevin’s mouth imperils this book deal. “Kevin, Grip is my boyfriend,” I tell him, annoyed and tired of stretching this out. Kevin’s poor jaw nearly unhinges. “Grip is your boyfriend?” Behind the designer spectacles, his eyes widen and dart between Grip and me. Grip links our fingers on the table. “As fuck would have it, yup.” Grip raises our hands to his lips, kissing my fingers, but keeps his eyes trained on Kevin.

I am.” She slides her arms around me from behind and I feel a sweet sting, her teeth gently biting my shoulder through my T-shirt. I love it when she bites me, but I’m not giving her that satisfaction yet. “But that doesn’t mean you get to stop kissing me. You have to multitask.

This. Her. Us. I’m as sure of her as I am that every night the moon will show up, the stars will shine down, and hours later, the sun will rise again. This is my favorite part of every day. The sun is down, and we eat by fairy lights strung overhead. We both devour the steak and salad I prepared. When our plates are scraped clean, I’m on my second beer and Bristol has gone through half a bottle of red wine. We’re cracking each other up and just sharing what happened during our day, which leads her back to lunch with Kevin. “Your fans would eat up a poetry book from you.” Bristol pours another glass of red. “And it would showcase the breadth of your talent beyond hip-hop.

I’m fine with you doing the panel—on one condition.” “Name it.” “Piggyback ride.” I fake exasperation, allowing her to shift the subject and lighten the air around us. “Carry you up them steps?” “Yes, up them steps.” She turns me around and presses on my shoulder until I’m squatting. When she jumps on my back, my hands hook under her long, smooth legs. I pretend to struggle under her weight and she laughs. She sounds so happy I can’t help but grin thinking of my driven, sarcastic girl describing herself as a bird. “If I give you a piggyback ride,” I tell her at the bottom of the staircase, “you give me a blow job. We’ll call it even.” “What’s so special about a blow job?” She tightens her arms around my neck when I start up the stairs. “I give you one like every other day.” “First of all, I can’t believe you actually just asked me what’s so special about a blow job. You may as well ask what’s so special about the Taj Majal. A blow job is practically an eighth wonder.” I press on as she laughs into my neck. “Second, the operative words there are every other day, so obviously, there’s room for improvement.” “No, the operative word is blow job.” She lightly smacks the side of my head. “Sounds like work for me.” “Well you’re employee of the month.” “I better be the only employee.” “Oh, you don’t have to worry about me cheating.” I squeeze her thighs. “I like my balls attached.

I could write a sonnet to Bristol’s nipples, the way they tip her breasts, the blend of pink and brown, roses and chocolate, shading her areola. I lean down to hover over them, my eyes snaring hers. Anticipation thickens the air. “I wanna do to you what spring does to the cherry trees,” I whisper, paraphrasing the Neruda poem before taking one nipple in my mouth and laving it with my tongue. Like a flower waiting for spring, she blossoms. She blooms like sweet fruit ripening between my lips.