1. Cuddle with Kacey

Transcript

Hi there, it's good to see you. I'm glad you're here. It's been such a busy few days, and lying with you sounds like an absolute dream.

Maybe we can dream some while we lie, yes? Come then. Lying with you here is a remarkably calming experience.

The soft shift of your body as you breathe. The way the length of your back fits into the crux of my chest. The warm reminder of human connection that is shared between our bodies.

Your feet slowly scoping their way down the fronts of my shins, resting at the incline of my ankles, covering the tops of my own under their arches. This fluid motion feels like you're washing the week's worries away, and in gratitude, I wrap my arm over you, draped across your belly, and pulling us together. I love the feeling of your calm breaths that move my forearm further from me and back again.

I can feel the subtle hills and valleys of your middle as I run my hand over you. The pronounced dip where your belly button hides. The firming plateau where your ribs make themselves known.

As I drag my thumb around your belly, you press into me with the balls of your feet, and I grip you just tight enough to respond in kind. Then, a deep breath. Again, our bodies seem to mold almost too well as my brow and nose find their way into the arch between your neck and the back of your head.

Moving my own head back and forth against you, I press my brow against your hair, taking in the smell of you and feeling the sometimes ticklish, sometimes smooth curtain of their strands passing over my lips. With my other hand, I palm the back of your head, slowly rubbing my fingers into your scalp and parting your hair from the back of your neck, parting it from my lips and freeing both for what comes next. I let this handful pass through my fingers as if holding hands with soft willow.

The fine hairs that weave across the back of your neck meet my lips as I bring myself to you, resting them on your crux and taking my time taking you in. Millimeters passing between them each second. I can feel your hand overtake mine on your belly, and the feeling of your thumb working its way into my palm, into the muscles and the bones that make it possible to hold you.

It's divine. I breathe into the back of your neck, and press my knees into the underside of yours, and you work firm circles into the surprising amount of joints in my hand. I let go of your hair, letting it partially cover my face, and bring my arm under you and over your front, coming to rest across your breasts, the pad of my thumb finding its way into the groove of your left collarbone, and my fingers gently toying against the ridge between your shoulder and neck.

The heat radiating from your neck is another warm reminder of life, and it makes me hum in comfort against you. Face half buried in your hair, your steady work with my hand slows, and eventually settles into a secure hold, fingers grazing against the other hand's knuckles, as if in reassurance that we are, in fact, here. Our breaths slow, and I wonder if in this liminal state, you would like to come with me somewhere deeper.

Not far, but not here. As our eyes close, imagine the slow movement of the earth. See if you can feel the subtle, minute changes in placement, only millimeters by the second.

The slow kiss on the back of your neck that is time against matter, dew on leaves, mist resting between trees. Feel the warmth radiating against you, inside and out, as we find ourselves in a richly green forest, its floors specked with fallen leaves and moist, dark earth. Its trees stand in perfectly imperfect rows, reaching high into the lazy sunlight above, golden and calm, encouraging the dewy air that is broken only by the slightest cool breeze against our cheeks, our necks, the folds between our fingers.

Each tall tree almost seems to bend at its tip, like an individual strand of hair, its leaves creating a greening filter to the sun's golden light, and allowing the world below to take sanctuary from the fullness of its heat. Can you smell how rich the earth is here? How the breeze infuses us with its spiced musk, the peppered metal of wet stone, the bittersweet palate of flora that has become embedded in its small mounds, creating a tapestry of freckled scents both familiar in their union and unfamiliar in their subtleties.

The sounds here play a similar game, a weaving buzz of animal life, water, insects, and what feels like it may be the mist sounding its own self out between the trees. Tiny crackles announce themselves beneath our feet as we pass through the haze of stem and branch. The asymmetry of the countless trees surrounding us shifts like flecks of paper in a kaleidoscope as we weave past their fixed axis.

The air picks up the cool, stony freshness of water, and you can hear the faint trickle of a stream nearby, whispering and chattering among its fellow residents of the forest. We follow the sound as it grows more present, filling more of our peripherals, and we see it at last, catching the late afternoon's light and wearing it like golden silk. Despite its talkative nature, this wide stream is calm and content to be where it is, and unbothered by our presence.

Take in the branches that lie in its clear waters, the stones that peek out from the bed, the vegetation that basks at its edges, the occasional leaf that drifts downstream, rounding its own center to show off its beauty to us. We are barefoot now, nothing we have brought with us that separates the soles of our feet from the soft earth below. Feel the fragments of old life, past life, press up into the balls of your feet, under the arches of your toes, the rogue blade of grass grazing against your heel.

Let us walk forward now, dipping into the stream with our bare feet, and let the lazy but determined waters course over them. We sit, this earth firm below us, and take in this moment. Let's close our eyes and just listen.

Feel the funnels of water make their way over you, under you, the occasional spray catching your leg or your hand. Your fingertips are near mine, that small buzz of energy between them, the minute shift in placement of the fine blades of grass under your palms. Breathe again, and open your eyes.

Life, once again, a deer, young and speckled, drinks from the stream only a few yards across from us, silent as we are, and watching us with half-turned gaze. Its pink tongue captures fractions of the stream and brings it to its mouth, its fine legs moving only slightly in a mindful steadiness. The sun breaking through the treeline beams upon its coat, each strand of shining hair like cast gold on the side of a temple.

The young deer finishes its drinking and takes us in with dark eyes, ears flicking indeterminately at the gnats that would be otherwise invisible if not for the sky's spotlight that illuminates them. As silently as it appeared, the deer disappears again into the darkening forest. We move now toward the golden refractions downstream that end with a small waterfall pattering along the rock face linking our ground to the ground several stories below us.

We stare out across a deep and wide canyon, the cool air of its openness spreading over our faces and slipping through the water clinging to our legs. We take a seat on an outjetting of rocks and take in the sunset in progress, watching the shadows grow long over the thousands of trees in the distance, turning their browns and their grays, the greens and the golds, into a bluish black in the contrast of brilliant light and consuming shadow. The sky above quickly aging from blue to yellow to orange to pink to purple.

As you watch these changes take, I can't help but admire you. The stars that gradually make themselves known match your eyes in this dimming light, and your gaze upwards takes us there, high up now, no longer tethered, just floating. Slowly, open your eyes with me, and feel my breath warm the back of your neck.

Feel the gravity holding you here, down below the stars, the sun, and the moon, here. We are here, together, feeling the soft weight of our bodies pressing into one another. Our breaths press you back into my chest once again, kissing in the slow moments of this embrace, hanging like silk in the still air that surrounds us.

Thank you for taking this short journey with me. It means so much just to be silent and to absorb one another, the small moments, those reminders of life, and sharing this with you is no small reward. So until next time, keep breathing.

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