She Whispers, Just a Little Longer

(for the yoni, for the years that burned like honey)

She Whispers, Just a Little Longer
(for the yoni, for the years that burned like honey)

I fear the light is dimming.
Not the sun,
but the one that lived between my thighs,
a golden, holy flame
that once knew how to scream
yes, yes, yes
without words.

No one warned me
that pleasure had a clock.

That the fire I met only a decade ago,
late but fierce,
would begin to slip through the cracks
of flesh and time.

Why did no one tell me?
I would have bathed longer
in the sacred oils.
I would have swallowed more nights whole,
let my yoni speak in her raw, wordless tongue,
inviting, devouring,
worshipping the beloved
until my bones were wet with praise.

Now,
there are mornings I wake,
and she is quiet.
As if waiting for permission
to sleep forever.

And I?
I am not ready.
Not for goodbye.

Not for silence where once there was rhythm
and sweat
and sacred mess.

I miss the ache.
The way my body used to hum
at the sight of bare skin,
the sound of breath near my ear.

I miss being devoured
and devouring.
Being the altar and the flame.

I am praying.
Not to gods,
but to the warriors of hormone surges,
the wild river women,
the oxytocin priestesses
who know how to stir the sleeping blood.

I don’t need eternity.
Just a little longer.
Let my yoni wake again
not for anyone,
but for herself,
for the pulse,
for the sacred game,
for the temple
where time doesn’t exist.

Let me say goodbye
only when she’s had enough,
not when the world says it’s time.
Let the final fire come
not as loss,
but as celebration.

Let the flame flicker once more
in the name of joy.
In the name of the woman
who learned late,
but loved hard.

Just a little longer.
Just one more night

of full-bodied yes.