Your Towel

Today I did something

maybe I should not have done

in a place where I should not have done it.

It was one of those awkward moments

when you visited me in a place

you should not have been,

you brought coffee and a pastry

we made quick passionate love,

you held me tighter than I had ever

been held and I offered you my shower,

as I sat looking at the blank computer

screen waiting to fill its page

with empty words.

I asked if you’d like a shower

as I sat in my chair listening to water

run down the body which had

just been snaked about mine.

I imagined how you ran the soap

up and down your hardness

lathering in places I had just touched

your perfectly sculpted nose

to your perfectly aligned toes,

rubbing between them

and then to your groin

for its second wash.

You then dried yourself, slung your

towel around your waist, like you do

in the way that I want to rip it off

to watch all of you stand to my attention —

but this time you came from the bathroom

dressed and ready to leave.

We kissed, you snuck out the back door

and I snuck into the bathroom to spot

your neatly folded towel slung over

my shower door, a height only

the tall you could reach.

I stood on my toes to pull it down,

placed my nose deep into the terrycloth

trying to transcend into your smell,

the you that was with me

within some faraway dream.

Diana Raab, Ph.D. is an award-winning poet, memoirist, blogger, essayist and speaker. Her book, Writing for Bliss: A Seven-Step Plan for TellingYour Story and Transforming Your Life is forthcoming in 2017. Raab is a regular blogger for Psychology Today, Huff50 (The Huffington Post), and PsychAlive. More at dianaraab.com.

Originally published at forthmagazine.com on December 11, 2016.