Your Pajamas – by ANGELA KUBINEC

Your Pajamas

 

Your pajamas are subtle, implying the curve of your frame without demonstration,

their soothing fabric smooth on your skin.  Within them, your rhythm

of bend, stretch, reach, and embrace bears ripe fruit.  I gain

furtive happiness and relaxation, studying your outline

when you look away.

 

I sense your love of being touched as your pajamas float above the gentle surface of your skin. With the pressure of my hands, magnificent little wrinkles form,

making you whisper something wordless, profound. I feel I can

hear gold and the air turns garnet

when you moan.

 

Your pajamas are demure, their weave natural and basic, with color pure and low.  They reveal nothing and everything with the tender urge of your breasts dawning

at the scoop of their neckline.  My mind can mirror your shape at will,

unconfined, elemental.  It sleeps in my heart, timeless, captured,

its demanding beckon eased, leaving me less a beggar

but a beggar still.

 

Sometimes, your pajamas are merciful to me.  They allow me to press my face

into the fabric that covers your belly.  They call my hands to your waist.

They yield to the weight of my body.  They have a small lacy trim

that holds a strange, welcome dryness for my lips, and I want

to wet it with my mouth.  They do not ridicule me when

I cry into them, childish, my face in your lap as you

stoke my hair with off-handed warmth.

 

Your pajamas are kind to you.  They witness your playful pleas.  Unwrapping themselves from you with complete awareness, they accommodate my urgent care and craving. While they rest on the floor, they are obediently still.  After neglecting them, they

always welcome you back.  No questions, much like me.  They remind you

to accept the comfort and surety you can only find here.  The gifts I leave

for them in our sheets make you smile sadly, and provide

no grace or peace in my soul.

 

Your pajamas torture us, and are unruly at critical moments.  We love and hate them

for their willful resistance.  Binding us when we least intend, they uncomfortably

cling when damp.  Evil buttons make me clumsy, and I am the only one they

cause to stumble in the dark.

 

Your pajamas

are cruel vestments in the church of humiliation.

 

Your pajamas make me grieve, languishing in the hamper, empty like my arms.  They mock me from the drawer when you are away.  The soft beating noise they make

in the dryer reminds me that one day I will no longer be smooth, and

their worn spots haunt me.

 

Your pajamas know that one day I will be even less to you

than I am now, folding and unfolding simple things that

I smell and put away.

***

Angela holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Physics from the College of Charleston (SC).  She taught Mathematics in grades four through ten for nearly twenty years. Recently she was named Senior Editor at the online literary journal EasyStreet.  She enjoys social writing on sites like Fictionaut and House of Writers.