There is something seductively pure about a reality untainted by touch and physicality. Existing in the perfection that is unseen and imagined, there is the assumed possibility of no flaw, no grit, and no blemish. But untouched and unfelt also bears the greatest chance of impossibility. Too good to be true. That we will only ever grasp an unhappy version of an intoxicating invisible dream.
But when the sensation presses into our flesh, we know. When the thrill of feeling washes over then we have learned there is something real. Not theoretically, not cognitively, not rationally, but by the touch of it, we know something. While unrecognized as a dependable source of truth, our senses teach us about the world around us. Where would we be if not for ears and eyes, sights and sounds, smells and feelings, tastes and fingers. Taking in whatever it is that makes a thing a thing, by our touch with the external world.
Wanting to touch. Needing to taste A desire so powerful, it terrifies. Feeling holding grasping a piece of reality that is outside of the mind. Holding tight to an object that casts its own impression upon another. Affecting and mixing in mutual molding of one another, the externals intermingle and are never quite the same.
Terrified to live in a world that is purely unspoken and untouched. Trapped in the silent internal imagination, where words are thought on, but not heard. Where sensations are dreamed and recalled, but not felt. Truly there is no way to know what is true. Until physical penetration upon ears and mouth and forehead and nerves, that’s when someone and something breaks into our existence. That’s when truth is alive in our body, even if just for a second, without question.
And thoughts and memories are painful, now. Dreaming of knowing with your own flesh. Memories of sense assuring that there is a truth to touch. Where words and songs can inspire hope and awakening, physicality makes those dreams come true. A flickering over the skin says this is real. A wash over the tongue tells a story that cannot be spoken. Imagined visions that finally put on skin and bones are the ones that will remain. Because dreams are forgotten the moment one awakes. But a touch, a smell, a song etch a tangible reality.
The stench and smell on a body of something that lasts. Breath and movement, sweat and tear has a smell unique to every tragedy and victory. Each soul carries an aroma of the past and a fragrance of the future. Inseparable uncontrollable, she breathes in where he has been, where he is going. Life and vitality, abandonment and vice, sickness and health, pride or humility, domination and death. She can smell him. She can know him. There is no hiding who he is, and that he is near.
A taste of a body is something that will endure. The soft lick of a lip, rushing sweet passion to the tips of a finger. Salty taste of the skin and sweat from the neck tells something more than a carefully chosen protected word. A drink of bodily fluid and blood will connect souls unlike any carefully crafted conversation. A deeper knowledge of taste and wet exchange binds the lovers chemically and cosmically. Unlike thoughts, a spectrum of truth and lie, a taste cannot hide what it means to communicate.
Drinking in. Slurping gulping. Tongue swimming in thick swamp of taste. Parting the liquid over and under. It stings a little and wraps around warm. Closed lips, dark cave, pool of sensation thrashing inside her cheek. Tingles, spices, electric, fluid. Spit and breathing oceans rushing over smooth solid teeth. Thrusting toward her throat, fight the urge to swallow deep. So that she will savor long this mouthful of life.
Yet, the dream is not real. The imagination is not real. The hope is not real. The future is not real. It is a wish. Only insofar as it remains untouched, unheard, unspoken, untasted. Reality is born into the physical, and then its every dream, imagination, hope and future has life.
Cindy Koch 