Sex

It was April 15, 2000. I had a few books stacked beside the bed—reading material that reflected the many states of mind I moved through in a week: psychodynamic theory, ego state therapy, even a book written by a woman with dissociative identities using collages and magazine cutouts to represent the parts of herself.

I had been reflecting on all of it—how we carry different selves inside us, how trauma and healing play out over time—when Lynn appeared at the doorway.

She had that mischievous smile I loved.

“I want sex,” she said, straightforward as ever.

My heart lifted. “Me too.”

We undressed quickly, comfortably. Familiar, yet new each time. The kind of comfort and chemistry that only deep love can produce. When she moved toward the bed, her gaze locked with mine, I felt the same awe I always did. Like seeing her again for the first time.

She climbed on top of me, our lips finding each other fast, hungry. Her body pressed close, arms wrapped tightly around me, the space between us seeming to vanish.

“I feel like I can’t get close enough,” she breathed, her mouth pressing into mine like she was trying to merge with me—hungry, urgent, needing more than just touch.

“I know,” I said, pulling her even closer.

She shifted, her breath catching as our bodies moved together. Then, gently but firmly, she paused.

“You’re too close, sweetie,” she said with a soft sigh, her meaning unspoken but understood.

We had talked about it before—her health, the impossibility of pregnancy due to her condition. It was the one boundary we couldn’t cross, no matter how much we wanted to become one in every way.

But still, we held each other. Moved together. Loved each other as fully as two people can.

The intensity built. She clung to me, her body not arching but wrapping itself around mine—like she was trying to become part of me. Our mouths met again and again, hungry, urgent, like we could dissolve into each other if we just held tight enough.

And then—suddenly—I let go.

She felt it. Paused. Still. A quiet smile crossing her face.

There was silence, the kind that only happens when two people have given something wordless to each other.

She whispered, “We should shower.”

I caught my breath. “But you…”

She looked at me, her eyes soft. “I'm happy,” she said. “It’s okay.” 

I was confused a bit and wanted more for her.

This was about connection. About wanting and being wanted. About love so deep that it didn’t need to be measured. It amazed me that this kind of passion was still happening nearly every day - like we were newlyweds. Yet, we were years into the life as husband and wife. It didn’t feel routine. It felt alive. Urgent. Sacred.

Afterward, she went to start the shower while I stayed in bed, a wave of serenity washing over me.

We were in love—because she was in love with me. Because I was in love with her. Because we had become, in so many ways, one.

“I love you,” she said as we stepped into the water together.

“I love you so much,” I replied, heart full.

Then I laughed softly.

“What?” she asked.

“I was just thinking of that song by The Moody Blues—the way the singer repeats those lines like he’s overcome, like he just can’t hold it in.”

I spoke the words that the singer in the song sang:

'Cause I love you,
yes, I love you,
oh, how I love you,
oh, how I love you…'

“That’s how I feel,” I told her. “I want to tell the whole world that I love Lynn.”

She smiled, the way she always did when she knew I meant every word.

And I did. I would have shouted it from rooftops. Not just after making love, but anytime. Every day.

That night, as I lay beside her, I started thinking about her dreams. About how much I wanted her happiness. She had talked about getting her Master of Fine Arts one day. Maybe I could help with that. Maybe I could buy her a kiln so she could fire her pottery at home. Maybe, with this practice I was building, I could give her more than just love. I could give her the things that filled her dreams.

I was in love. Not just based on the passion we shared but the peace and serenity that matched our connection together.

There’s a kind of silence that doesn’t come from others—it comes from inside. It’s the silence born of shame, planted early, before you have the words to resist it. It tells you your body is something to hide. That pleasure is dangerous. That certain fluids—mucus, discharge, even tears—are “unclean.”

That silence shaped me long before I ever met Lynn.

It started in childhood. I had a single memory of something like anal continence when I was young perhaps in 2nd grade, and instead of comfort or understanding, what I felt was dread. Not just of the accidents themselves, but of discovery. Then later I discovered Freud’s pleasure principle and discovered what happened. It could not possible be discovered. But why? Because for a moment I embraced pleasure as a young child?

I lived in fear that my mother might find evidence of my body’s betrayal—and reject me for it. There were no open conversations. No space to ask questions or seek reassurance. Just shame. Shame for being seen.

Shame for being human.

So I learned to hide. To compartmentalize. To disconnect.

Then, as an adult, I met Lynn. And Lynn lived in her body with honesty. She didn’t apologize for it. She wasn’t provocative—she was present. When she undressed, it wasn’t for show. It was for trust. For closeness.

Her body was not a performance. It was an invitation: See me. Hold me. Love me. It was also something she knew I wanted.

But I was still unlearning.

Cystic Fibrosis is a disease of the lungs, but its calling card is mucus—thick, persistent, impossible to ignore. It wasn’t abstract. It was physical. It showed up on tissues, in coughing fits, in the way her breath caught just a second too late. It interrupted kisses. It was a signifier of something I wanted to deny.

And I HATED it… wanted to destroy it. It wasn’t just frustration—it became a fantasy of justice. A yearning for something I could see and fight.

More than once, I dreamed that CF was a demon. Not a metaphor. A literal monster. Like something out of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I pictured it stalking through hospital halls, feeding off the weak, coming for my beloved. In that daydream, it came for stalked Lynn and I wanted to kill it. Not for a second did I consider whether this monster could hurt me. I was eager and ready to kill it.

Because this thing—the mucus, the coughing, the breathlessness—it wasn’t just a symptom. It was a violation. A thing that didn’t belong in the sacred space that was Lynn’s body. And I couldn’t do anything in reality. I was powerless.

But the shame - the programming - still whispered. It got mixed into a combination of secret discoveries of pleasure and signs of a disease that interfered with the normal life that we were building.

Lynn never kept me at a distance from her illness. When we met with the respiratory therapy team or sat through hospital consults, no one asked if I had the right to be there. They didn’t question whether I was her husband. They didn’t blink when I was invited into the examination rooms or into conversations that would typically remain private. They knew. Everyone knew.

I wasn’t just a visitor. I was her partner. And I needed to understand everything—how Cystic Fibrosis worked, what it did to her lungs, what we could do to fight it. I needed to know the terrain of the body we were both trying to protect.

I wasn’t just the person giving her a ride from Wilmington to Chapel Hill. I suppose Lynn conveyed something profound in calling me her fiancé.

The respiratory team showed me how to help. How to tap her chest and sides to loosen the mucus. There was no awkwardness. No question of whether it was appropriate for me to touch her there—across her chest, her ribs, even over her breasts. It wasn’t new. It wasn’t foreign. It was sacred. It was care. It was love.

It was our life that I tried to normalize - we were just two poets, two creative types who fell in love.

And what’s more: Lynn never flinched. Never acted like there was anything I shouldn’t see. Her body was never a battleground between intimacy and decency. It was our terrain—hers, yes, but shared in trust. I knew how to soothe it. How to support it. And how to mourn it, quietly, when she needed more than I could offer.

There was no shame there. No performance. No false modesty. Just the raw, necessary truth of what it meant to love someone whose body was fighting a battle it never chose.

Her body—beautiful, fragile, strong—was the first place I ever felt truly wanted.

And it was also the battleground.

I never saw her as broken. But I sometimes feared I was. That the silence I’d learned in childhood had cost me something sacred. That my uncertainty, my hesitation, my effort to unlearn shame was something she had to bear with me.

Years later, with someone else—Codi Renee—I found myself embracing physical pleasure more freely. I offered the kind of tenderness and desire that, in truth, was always meant for Lynn—the one I had truly been in love with.

But in my confusion, I mistook that willingness—my openness, my eagerness to give—for something deeper. I thought it meant I loved Codi Renee. I wanted to believe it. She even insisted it must be true because I said so.

But it wasn’t love. It was never love.

It was physical attraction wrapped in the illusion of connection. Desire masquerading as devotion. I see that now. And it feels tragic—not because I gave myself too freely to someone else, but because Lynn, the one who had loved me fully, the one who had taught me how to open, didn’t get to receive the fullness of what she awakened in me.

She deserved that depth. That freedom. That joy.

What I gave Codi Renee was shaped by what Lynn helped me discover. But the motivation with Codi Renee wasn’t love—it was the desperate hope of being good enough for someone who kept me at a distance. The desire to be chosen. To prove I could be desirable.

Lynn never made me prove anything. With her, I was already enough.

This isn’t a chapter of regret. It’s a chapter of recognition.

I recognize now that Lynn didn’t just teach me how to love—she taught me how to stay. To sit with what’s hard. To touch what’s vulnerable. To stop pretending that we need to be “clean” (whatever that means) and whole to be worthy of love.

CF never gave me the fight I wanted. No monster in the hallway. No thing to destroy. But Lynn gave me the chance to fight in smaller, truer ways. To stand beside her. To learn that sacredness isn’t found in perfection—but in discovery of each other with no expectations.

In every tear, in every kiss, in every quiet act of care—we were writing a new language. A new covenant.

One that said:

You are not disgusting. You are not broken. You are not alone.

You are loved.

When Diane offered to buy us a house, everything changed. Not just practically—emotionally, spiritually. The moment she said it, without hesitation, it felt like the world had finally caught up to what we already knew: Lynn and I were a family.

Diane saw who we were to each other, and she honored it. With love. With trust. With a profound and silent blessing.

Diane purchased a home in Wilmington, and we would pay her rent—$200 a month, split between us. She helped us furnish it, decorate it, make it ours. She bought the bed, helped us arrange the bedroom, and never once suggested we live as anything less than husband and wife.

This wasn’t something Lynn and I had to tiptoe around. Diane understood. She didn’t need us to explain. Her presence in our home wasn’t a threat to our privacy—it was a quiet affirmation. There were no awkward conversations, no veiled comments. When we stood with her in the bedroom we’d share, picking out furniture or planning the layout of the space, there was a sacred simplicity in it: this is your home, and you belong to each other.

And with that, the final traces of my old religious fears—the ones that had once whispered about sin and shame—finally fell silent.

We weren’t sneaking around or playing house. We were fully living it. As engaged partners. As soulmates. As husband and wife in every way that mattered.

Our intimacy deepened. Slowly. Tenderly. Respectfully. Prior to this, even when Lynn stayed the night, we’d stopped short of what most would call “sex.” But now, in this home we shared, there were no barriers. No more holding back. When Lynn undressed in front of me, it was not bold—it was natural. It was an offering of trust and closeness. A language of love without words.

She wanted to be close. And so did I.

There’s a sacredness to that kind of vulnerability. The kind where nothing is hidden—where desire is not a demand, but a shared yearning. Lynn didn’t wait for me to initiate intimacy. She didn’t assume that role.

Our relationship didn’t work that way. We discovered each other. We listened to each other’s bodies. We made space for uncertainty and gave it time to become comfort.

And always, we talked.

It wasn’t just about passion. It was about care. I asked often if I was hurting her—not out of fear, but out of love. Her answers were clear, direct, and sometimes breathless: “Don’t stop.”

That was Lynn. Direct. Unapologetic. Full of life.

We also navigated practical realities—like the fact that she couldn’t get pregnant. Cystic Fibrosis made that too dangerous. But Diane didn’t need reassurance from me; she trusted Lynn. When I once asked Lynn what her mom thought about our sex life, she just smiled and said, “She just wants to make sure I don’t get pregnant.”

That was enough. It spoke volumes.

Our home became a place of laughter, of routines, of warmth. We adopted two cats—Tip and Boo. Diane installed a small swinging door so they could get to the garage. We had a treadmill and free weights in the garage, which became my mini gym. In the back room, we set up a shared workspace with a computer and bookshelves we built and stained ourselves.

The bedroom had a small TV where we’d fall asleep watching Star Trek. Lynn had a nebulizer and her medication equipment nearby. We made each other meals. Took turns cooking and cleaning. We didn’t have chore charts or rigid rules—we just communicated, shared, and adapted.

There was nothing performative about our life together. It was ordinary in the most extraordinary ways.

Sometimes I would lay my head in her lap, and she’d caress my forehead. We wouldn’t say much. We didn’t need to.

It was serenity and passion coexisting. She could arouse me with a glance or soothe me into sleep with a touch.

Our intimacy never became routine. It always felt like discovery. Like poetry we were writing together, one shared breath at a time.

Even now, it’s hard to describe what that felt like. We were never out of sync. Never indifferent. If one of us smiled and the other saw it, we responded. Always. No deflection. No distance.

That, to me, is the rarest kind of love.

We didn’t need a wedding to make it real. And no institution, no system, no doctrine could define what we knew to be true:

We belonged to each other.

Memories and Dreams of Abuse

For all the serenity and safety Lynn gave me, there were still echoes from the past that hadn’t fully faded.

Memories of the abuse I experienced growing up were never far from my mind—sometimes not far enough. Even in that haven we’d created, my body remembered what it had endured. The nightmares still came.

I had been assaulted—verbally, physically, emotionally. And long after I left that home, long after I was safe, my nervous system hadn’t quite caught up. I was still having nightmares, often vivid, always jarring. They found their way into my sleep like intruders.

In those dreams, I was fighting back. I would lash out at my abuser—usually my mother who was the most abusive. Only in dreams would I strike out at my mother. In that strange space between waking and sleep, it felt like my fists were flying. Like I was punching the bed.

What terrified me was the thought that I might hit Lynn. That, in my sleep, I might hurt her. The fear chilled me to the core. I didn’t fully understand it, but I carried it.

I remember one night, shaken, telling her what I’d dreamed—how I was flailing, shouting, punching in the dark. Her response was immediate and calm. “You didn’t hit me,” she said. “You didn’t even move that much. You shouted, and I woke up. That’s all.”

She wasn’t afraid. Not of me. Not of the shadows in my mind.

And that reassurance—that unwavering calm—was everything. She grounded me. She reminded me that I was no longer in that place, that my body could unlearn what it had been taught by fear. She held me and comforted me. I was like a child, not literally in a fetal position but in my mind I collapsed into that position.

These nightmares stayed with me when I was 30. But Lynn stayed with me, too. Not just beside me in bed, but beside me in the deeper sense—in the places where shame and trauma used to live. She didn’t try to fix me. She didn’t flinch. She just stayed.

And in that stillness, in that love, I healed a little more each time.

After we got engaged, life didn’t transform overnight—but the horizon began to shift. Our conversations became more grounded, our hopes more tangible. I had moved out of the place I shared with Donna and Terri, and sometimes Lynn stayed the night with me, or I with her. We were growing closer in every way.

Even then, we weren’t “sleeping together” in the way most people would define it—not yet. That final boundary remained unspoken, uncrossed. But something had changed between us. Lynn, always attuned to me, may have sensed that I was becoming more at ease, less tangled in the old religious shame I’d carried for so long. When she removed her shirt—no longer stopping at just dropping her bra—it felt natural. Not bold, not calculated, just... right. She was honoring the space I’d opened. And in truth, the hesitation had always come from me. My toxic beliefs.

It wasn’t about a lack of desire. We had that, abundantly. It was the religious programming—those lingering voices whispering rules I no longer fully believed. And still, they haunted me.

And yet—our bodies were already speaking the truth. We held each other longer, touched with deeper intention. Every brush of skin seemed to say: this is good. This is safe. This is love. Nothing in me felt confused about those moments. I wasn’t struggling to reconcile them with morality or scripture. Instead, I found myself quietly letting go of what no longer made sense. The unspoken language between us—how far we’d go, how much we’d share—was shaped by mutual respect and gentle restraint. She knew where I stood, without my needing to say a word.

And then came Diane’s offer.

Diane—Lynn’s mother—offered us a home to rent after our engagement. That gesture was more than generous—it was symbolic. It meant we were stepping fully into a shared life, one defined by commitment and love, not by paperwork or permission. The decision to move in together wasn’t taken lightly. It was the turning point where I had to reconcile what I’d been taught with what I knew in my heart to be true. And Diane didn’t need a marriage certificate to take this step.

Until then, even during our most passionate moments, Lynn and I had kept our clothes on. I had still been holding onto the last fragments of the religious ideas I was raised with—teachings about what sex was supposed to mean. And even though Lynn never pressured me, I think we both knew those barriers weren’t really about her. They were about what still lived inside me.

But once we accepted the house—once we knew we were going to share a home—everything settled. The clarity came.

We were no longer visiting each other’s spaces or planning around separate routines. We were going to sleep in the same bed. Wake up under the same roof. Share meals, memories, bills—and a life.

And with that new home came a new level of intimacy. Not forced. Not rushed. Just… natural.

We undressed without shame. We touched without hesitation. We slept skin to skin. We made love—not because it was overdue or expected, but because it was an extension of everything we were already giving each other.

There is something sacred about being fully wanted. Not just emotionally, but physically. There is something healing in knowing that another human being longs to be close to you—not just out of desire, but from love, from a hunger to belong.

I think of newborns placed on a parent’s bare chest. That skin-to-skin contact, that grounding, that wordless affirmation: You’re here. You’re safe. You’re mine.

That’s what it felt like. That’s how natural it became. Not performance. Not shame. Just presence.

And I knew I had made peace with it. Not gradually—decisively.

I didn’t see it as “living in sin.” I saw it as something sacred. We weren’t hiding from God—we were honoring what He had given us. I believed then that if marriage was meant to be a covenant of love, fidelity, and mutual care, then we had already entered into it. The legal part had been denied to us, but the spiritual part was already real.

But not everyone saw it that way.

The Church didn’t.

When we approached the priest, hoping for a religious ceremony, he refused. Without a legal marriage license, he said, he couldn’t perform the sacrament. He knew what a legal marriage would mean—that Lynn could lose her health insurance and risk her life. And still, the answer was no.

Lynn wasn’t religious, but she was spiritual. She respected my beliefs. But I’m still stunned that I wasn’t driven away from the Church right then—by its coldness, its rigidity, its failure to act with compassion or common sense.

A sacrament, denied. Not because we lacked love. But because we wouldn’t risk her health.

And strangely, the greatest tension didn’t come from within us—it came from outside.

Especially when we visited my family.

On one trip, Lynn suggested we sleep in separate beds. I remember being shocked. Hurt, even. But she was trying to show respect for my parents. And I went along with it.

Looking back, I wish I hadn’t. I wish I had said, No. We’re a couple. If that’s not accepted, we’ll get a hotel. Or we won’t come.

It wasn’t about shame. It was about honoring the truth of our relationship.

I could have told our friends: “We’re more than engaged. We’re already married—in every way that matters.” They would have understood. No one would’ve alerted the state. There was nothing to hide.

We weren’t pretending.

We were living it. With tenderness. With intention. With love.

Even without a wedding, we were a family.

It’s amazing how much the silhouette in the photo that I found to include with this chapter of the book looks just like Lynn.

But before I share the story of our engagement, I want to go back to a moment that perfectly captures the spirit of who we were—a couple rooted in poetry, playfulness, and a love so deep it sometimes caught us both by surprise.

I had written a poem for her. That wasn’t unusual—I often wrote love poems—but this one was different. It had a dreamlike quality, inspired by both the Song of Songs from the Old Testament and a psychedelic 60s song by The Electric Prunes called “I Had Too Much To Dream (Last Night).”

We were at one of our usual Sunday night poetry readings at the Coastline Convention Center. It was late May 1994, nearly two years since we started seeing each other. The sun had sunk low, casting the room in golden dimness. Dusty, our beloved emcee, had turned on the soft lamp at the podium. It felt intimate, almost sacred.

I got up to read, not telling Lynn in advance what I was about to share. I wanted it to be a surprise. A public declaration of love.

Here’s what I read:

Dreamlike Visions

In this dreamlike vision
I lay in her lap,
while her golden hair
flows in the gentle wind,
on the beach.

Is this real?
I reach up to touch her
but she is gone... gone... gone
and I am laying on the sand.

Looking skyward I see her
in a vision.
She searches for me,
calling my name, saying,
"I am his and he is mine."

I try to get back
to find her
and that infinite beach
where we would walk hand-in-hand
or lay on the sand
holding each other
together
forever.

The vision –
the dream –
(incomplete)
the love
never ends...

the dream never
ends.

Even now, those words move something in me. At the time, I was still a Christian. Lynn was agnostic but open to the supernatural. I, on the other hand, have since become an atheist—one who still aches to believe. Back then, I wrote from that place of yearning and wonder, of faith intermingled with desire.

The song that partly inspired the poem had lyrics full of longing, of presence that slips away with the dawn. Though it was featured in a horror film, I was drawn to its haunting beauty—the way it captured the way love can feel like a dream, so vivid and intense, you ache when it's over.

At the end of my reading, the applause washed over me like a wave. People smiled and stopped me as I walked back to my seat. It was obvious what and who the poem was about.

But then came one of the most human, hilarious moments of that night.

I sat down next to Lynn, proud and quietly emotional. One of our mutual friends leaned over to compliment the poem. I turned to Lynn and whispered, “Well? What did you think?”

She looked at me, a bit startled. “What?”

“I mean... the poem.”

“Oh,” she said, her cheeks beginning to flush. “I wasn’t listening. I thought you were just reading something I’d already heard.”

There was a pause. I just smiled, shook my head.

“I’m so sorry, sweetie,” she added quickly, clearly embarrassed. “Let me read it now.”

I handed it to her. As she looked down, I leaned in, gently placing my hands on either side of her face, our lips meeting in a quiet kiss—slow, affectionate, full of amusement and intimacy. There were others around, so we kept it brief. But it said everything.

“It’s okay,” I said softly. “You know I really love you.”

“I love you too, honey,” she replied, eyes still smiling.

She read the poem then. Really read it.

And from that moment forward, it became a kind of inside joke between us. I’d tease her, saying things like, “If I ever pour my heart into a love poem, I hope Lynn’s listening.”

She’d laugh. And in time, she made it more than right. On nights when she hadn’t brought something of her own to read, she would ask me if I had that poem. And then she would read my poem—our poem—at the mic. I lost track of how many times that happened.

There was something magical in that gesture. She made my words her own. She carried them, shared them, honored them.

Just like she did with my love.

We didn’t plan a wedding at the same time we planned to get engaged—though of course, it was implied. Those details could wait. For now, it was about the promise. The meaning. The declaration that we were choosing each other, not just in feeling, but in the form of a ring.

We talked about what it meant to be engaged. For us, it wasn’t a performance. It was a lifetime commitment to live as husband and wife. It felt natural. It felt right. And yet, it also felt astonishing.

Words like amazing and wonderful get used so much they almost lose their meaning. But not here. Let me tell you what actually happened.

We went to the mall to look for a ring. Lynn was practical, as always. She reminded me we didn’t need anything flashy. We weren’t rich. A big diamond didn’t matter. “About two hundred dollars,” she said, matter-of-factly - it was her practicality that mattered. Since this was about us, we were going to be dealing with shared finances. So, I had to do what she knew to be what we could afford.

Still, I was nervous. Butterflies-in-my-stomach nervous. My heart was racing. I kept thinking, This is real. This is happening. I’m not dreaming.

They measured her finger. She chose the ring.

“Are you sure?” I asked, my voice catching a bit.

“Yes,” she said, turning to the salesperson with a smile. “Let’s get this one.”

The woman nodded. “Your fiancé can pick it up on Monday.”

Your fiancé. That was the first time I heard it out loud.

Monday came, and it felt strangely ordinary.

I arrived at her place on Wrightsville Beach with the small bag in hand. Lynn was upstairs.

She entered the room just as I was reaching into the bag.

“I want to…” I began, lifting the box, ready to open it. But I froze at what I was seeing.

Her eyes welled up with tears before I could finish the sentence.

She knew I was bringing the ring—she’d heard the woman at the store say, “your fiancé can pick it up on Monday.” But the emotion on her face—it wasn’t expected. It wasn’t rehearsed. It stopped me cold.

I didn’t finish the sentence. I couldn’t. I just looked at her. I held the box in one hand and reached toward her with the other.

We moved together like magnets. Her arms wrapped around my neck, her cheek pressed to mine, her whole body trembling slightly as her tears touched my skin.

I whispered, “Do you want to put it on?”

She nodded, still speechless.

I slipped the ring onto her finger. And for a second, we just stood there.

Then she kissed me—deeply, hungrily. Her hands cupped my face. Mine moved around her waist. We didn’t speak—not right away.

There was only the heat of her body pressed against mine, her tears mingling with our breath, her legs wrapping around me as I lowered us gently onto the bed.

My arm slid under her shoulders. Her heart was racing. So was mine.

“I’m in love,” I whispered.

“I love you so much,” she said, her voice thick with emotion.

It was—without question—the most joy I have ever felt. Not because she said yes. But because she showed me something deeper: that I could bring her such joy.

My legs went weak.

I lifted her slightly, cradled her, and let us both fall back onto the bed. Her body melted into mine. My arm slipped around her shoulders, hers wrapped tight around my back.

Her heartbeat was loud against my chest. Her lips pressed harder to mine. I could feel the dampness of her tears on my cheek, her breath against my skin, the way our bodies moved together—like music, like ritual.

“I’m in love,” I said again, more to myself than to her.

“I love you so much,” she repeated, as if it needed no further explanation.

Nothing in my life has ever come close to the joy I felt in that moment. I had made someone that happy. Her. Lynn. The love of my life. And her joy was so pure and obvious.

She kissed me again—this time with hunger, with urgency. Like she had waited her whole life for this moment and didn’t want it to end. Her fingers gripped my back, my shoulders, my face, like she was trying to anchor herself to something solid, something real.

Later, we sat on the back porch above her kitchen—half a floor up from the surf and sand of Wrightsville Beach. She was on the phone with her mom, Diane.

I barely heard the conversation. My eyes were fixed on her, the light catching her hair, the ring glinting on her finger. And in that quiet, I just sat there, overflowing with awe.

That was the moment. Not the ring. Not the kiss. Not even the words.

I had not known that love could be so amazing and such a powerful experience.

It was the knowing. The knowing that we were building a life together—one full of creativity, practicality, tenderness, and shared dreams.

This wasn’t fantasy. This was commitment. Real. Mutual. And even now, all these years later, that moment still feels like the best single moment in my life.

Note: This poem was written originally with a different title at a time when I was brainwashed by religious ideas that made anything sexual to be shameful, secretive, or dirty. Hence, in the original version of this poem I used the word "lust" and used vampire imagery instead of describing healthy sexual activity. I also referred to the vampire as a virgin, further insinuating that healthy sexual activities are something other than good.

Sensuous and Strong as the Serpent

This vampire lived
a lustful life
nourished and satisfied 
by flesh on flesh - 
She with the strength of the serpent.

Tonight, she held
a young man, barely 20,
who is lost in her dark red eyes.
For a brief while,
he was convinced he had the upper hand.
Seeking to overpower her,
with his 6-foot muscular frame,
to her five and one half feet...

He thought she would be an easy
victim
to satisfy 
his desires and need for power.

With each motion he made,
she wrapped more of herself into him,
hands, arms, legs around him.
Till there was only the sound of blood
Beating louder,
pulsating
throbbing. 

As he struggles for air,
in this last dream of his life,
Somehow he finds a pleasure
in her pulsating blood-red eyes.

Her pointed teeth rested
against his pulsating artery.
There was just their rhythmic motions
as she consumed all of him
up to his last breath.

Not a drop of his blood was spilled,
she had not intended to kill,
in fact, she herself
was wounded in his attack.