Fire

The anticipation of the touch is the thing.

The electricity that is everywhere all at once before someone garners the courage to demolish the chasm in a noble act of faith. The audacity to assume that this person is yearning for your touch in the same way that you are yearning for theirs. And the world is all enchantment. It is stars that shine brighter and mountains that seem taller and every ray of sunshine is imbued with potential. And the longing is guttural and deep and from a version of yourself that existed thousands of years ago on a plain in some savannah in the hot, hot sun when instinct was the main driver of behavior and societal norms held less sway.

It is you and I in the dead of the night in a hut in the middle of the Amazon, surrounded by mosquito netting and the carnal heat of desire played off as friendship in the daylight.

It is in that first hesitant touch, the electricity of our fingers intertwining and the slow circle of your thumb on my palm that made everything fire.

It is those long nights in a deserted hotel in a city we barely saw because it was enough simply to be near you, to wake up to unchartered skin and the anticipation of touch.

It is the infernal heat that rises from the depths of one's soul in anticipation of the next fleeting, accidental (was it accidental?) connection. And it is one brush of the hand that leads to a touch of the lips and then the entire body is alight with need. So much need that, at first, one can't help but drown in the desire that knocks ceaselessly all night and all day until one is driven absolutely mad with its intensity and persistence and infernal heat. 

It is breath that is held until the space between us is diminished and hours that pass in only moments when we are together. It is the crisp summer air on my skin and the endless, destructive heat whose only means of ceasing is your touch and your lips and the exploration of hands in the muted hours of the morning when the whole world sleeps but not the infernal heat of need.

For mere mortals, the anticipation of touch in the dead of the night is all glorious fire. It burns everything down except your face and your fingers and that look in your eyes. It turns everything to ash and leaves the world alight with the fallout. 

The anticipation of your touch is the thing. It is everything.