(What Your Body Taught Me)
She was from Spain.
And no, I don’t mean that in the postcard way.
Not a flamenco fantasy or tapas and ocean breeze.
I mean her voice curved like vowels made to be whispered against a collarbone.
I mean her silence spoke better than most people’s mouths.
And I listened with everything I had.
I didn’t chase her.
She was just there.
Like the sunbeam on the hardwood that always found my feet before I was ready to wake.
She arrived like something I must’ve asked for in a dream,
and forgot I was brave enough to want.
She didn’t rush.
She had this way of making time obey her,
like every second was a fruit she peeled slowly,
letting sweetness drip, letting your hunger build.
That first night?
No lies.
I still dream about it in fragments.
Her hips against my fingertips, the warm hush in her laugh,
how she said my name with the back of her throat like it meant something holy.
She never asked me to prove myself.
She just saw me.
Saw through me.
And still leaned in.
With her, it wasn’t sex.
It was surrender.
Not conquest, communion.
She taught my body to slow down.
To feel things I hadn’t given myself permission to enjoy.
To listen,
not just to her moans, but to the quiet between them.
To the music our mouths made in between questions like:
“What do you want next?”
“Do you feel this, or are you just used to it?”
God, she was tender with me.
And not because she was soft,
She wasn’t.
She was deliberate.
Every kiss placed with meaning.
Every pause loaded with intention.
She could make stillness feel like a storm.
I remember how her fingers would trace my chest like she was writing something only she could read.
She made the moment last longer than it had any right to.
She taught me that rhythm isn’t just motion,
It’s memory.
It’s attention.
It’s devotion, disguised as skin on skin.
And when she left,
because she had to, because life doesn’t wait,
she didn’t say goodbye like it was an ending.
She kissed my eyelids like punctuation.
Like maybe the story paused, but never stopped.
And I carry that.
Not like a ghost.
Not like a scar.
Like a secret I smile about when no one’s watching.
Like a verse I hum under my breath when a touch doesn’t reach me the way hers did.
She isn’t the one who got away.
She’s the one who stayed in the parts of me that no one else gets to visit.
And sometimes, when I’m alone,
really alone,
I remember how she said:
“Don’t forget what this feels like.”
And I haven’t.
I never will.
Because she’s not in the past.
She’s in the parts of my body that still speak her language.