Such was my instinct. Licking off his tear.

There would be all kinds of them. Salt formulating at the rim of delicate lacerations. Translucent or otherwise.

One long, and flat, lap.

I loved my tongue. My tongue was kind. Generous and yet autonomous. It moved at its own speed. I, its actual master, was the one who ultimately had to adjust to its altering rhythms. It took time. But with time, I understood. I learned to appreciate. Sometimes it called forth a slowness of a different quality than that of its previous venture. Speed was poison to my tongue. Speed is poison to any tongue that savors. My tongue, it did not linger. It did not wait. It savored. Yet the weight could alter, it could shift. My tongue and I loved changing the weight whilst in the process of undertaking whatever current indulgence. Occasionally we loved to alternate the intensity—to sometimes turn softer; at another moment, harder. Sometimes we licked as though texture presented an impediment—only slight in size, slight in resistance, as it would be the case with the underside of a torn piece of leather.

I licked the surface of mirrors and I licked my own hand. I licked the countertop in the kitchen, the countertop in the conference room. I licked wood, I licked marble. I licked skin. That of citric fruit. Sometimes an apricot beckoned. A peach, if it was of the fuzzy variety. The slick ones tended to send shivers down my spine. Too smooth, too perfect, I instantly inferred, for my innate attraction to unrefined material. My tongue and I desired a moderate degree of friction. How else to experience change. Change brought along its vestibule of delicious discomforts. It kept the heart busy. It kept it pumping and stretching with gravity.

I licked the air, the air outside. Or the air in the hallway of baroque buildings. High, cool ceilings is what commonly would summon the sudden urge to part my lips and draw out my tongue. That cold, worn stone—did it actually whisper my name? I walked up stately stairways and licked one tier of air at a time as my heeled steps echoed on through murky annals of history.

In the park, I licked my fingers. Seated on the bench, both elbows drowning in the firm hollow of my bended knees, I played with my fingers around the lips soon after having finished lunch, and then, in a moment of heedless disregard, I went ahead and broke the rules. Being a woman, I was supposed to contain myself. Sometimes, however, in my nascent passion for touch, in my will for striking contact, decisively I’d forget my role, my inevitable visibility—clothes concealed; yet not even the ample kind could make us totally disappear in public. There in the wide open, for everyone to bear witness, I licked my fingers like my hand was a gutter. Like it was the small window of a prison cell. I pressed the tongue against the soft, hot bars and simply dragged grime and saliva from the base to the tip in one steady and gentle sweep. I couldn’t stop, sometimes. I had to repeat what I had done. Sometimes it felt too good to become a body, leave behind intelligence. Or was it something else entirely that right then was put to on hold, nearly effaced beingness? With my tongue, I was slowness itself. The hands could be slow. They could advance with intention. And so could my eyes. With their gaze, my eyes could lick contours, making the insides of things quiver—make them stir. I made people and things stir to life by looking at them. If I wanted to. If I actually wanted to look—observe. If I wanted to give. But with my tongue, I dared.

With my tongue, I caressed, I tasted. I discovered.

With my tongue I went to places that my eyes wouldn’t have endured. My tongue could stand shame.

In bed, in the evening after home from work or in the morning, when it was still dark, still quiet, I licked my hand opulently and then placed it on my cunt. I let it rest there. Like cotton shielding dough from particles of dust or the sun; the occasional trapped fly behind a closed kitchen window.

My hand, a cloth to conserve a play of wetnesses.

If you would have asked what was my favorite part to lick, any time I’d have answered my fingertips. I loved taking my index or middle finger into my mouth, place it between my straight row of teeth; my teeth only so very slightly leaning into the bone covered in flesh. From thereon, my tongue and I traced paths with the slightest lick, the faintest measure of closeness. Up and down my tongue and I moved. Just once. And then one more and last time—neither are you a stranger, I suppose, to the deadliness of repetition. After that, I paused. I paused so the memory of licking the tip of my finger could thoroughly sink in. I let time sink in right into my toes.

I excelled at licking because when I licked, the air or my hand, the masonry banks covered in rain or layers of freshly-fallen snow, I was committed. I licked with the whole of my body. Never would you have seen me taste things just with the tip—unsure of itself. Once there, regret did not perturb this heart of mine. I wasn’t afraid to go back to beginnings. No taste would cause a lasting wound. I was born a resilient lover of earth.

I learned to touch men by touching myself.