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I Remember

Maria Doherty

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I remember your hand gliding up my leg, slowly, softly, sensuously, firing nerve endings all the way from my ankle to the curve of my hip. Your touch was so filled with love, awe, respect and tenderness, everything that I had longed for but had been so afraid would never be mine.

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Your mouth nuzzled my neck and you whispered, "You are so beautiful.", the first time anyone had spoken those words to me. My heart came close to breaking apart with the ferocity of joy that ripped through it. For the first time in my life, I felt beautiful; I felt whole and loved. Me, the quiet book worm, the little mother, the blue stocking intellectual. No one, not even my own parents, had ever told me I was beautiful. A face the wrong side of serious, never tall enough, never slender enough, a body always at war with itself,? a mind too quick and too sharp for most men to tolerate; I saw myself reflected in their eyes and what I saw was never enough.

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Oh, yes, I remember how you looked at me, that first time we met, the very first time a man had shown me with his eyes that he found me attractive, or perhaps it was something about you that made it possible to believe that I could invoke that response. You reached inside me, touched me deep in my soul, and the tightly shuttered girl transformed into a passionate woman.

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I remember your touch; I remember your words; I remember awakening.