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Clean Sheets
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Clean Sheets I am standing at the clothesline, hanging sheets that wrestle with my arms. A small battle of wills and they go up, one by one, catching the breeze and pulling tight against the pins. As I kneel to pull another sheet out of the basket, the pins are tense on their springs, anchored between my teeth while I measure which side of the fabric is longer, which end needs to go up first. The sheets coil like snakes around each other, pulling and tugging their way out of the woven basket. I am thinking of you and those sheets and the things we do between them, the way the smell of them assaults me while I lie under you, the sweet smell of green grass and blue sky and clear air. They are soft against your sunburned back while I rise above you, your skin dark and tanned and mine the cursed fair of the Irish, your hands heavy on me while mine are clenching the sheets, pulling them hard sometimes, hard enough to yank the elastic corners from their moorings. Those are the times I know I will have to wash the sheets, pull them from the bed in the morning even while they still smell of grass and sky and air, because they are spotted with something that smells secret and exciting and so much like you that sometimes I lift them to my face and breathe deep, inhaling the scent of us together, rocking slowly with them in the laundry room as the fabric trails over my bare feet and I smile secret smiles that make me shiver the same way you do when you say my name that way. And sometimes I leave them there on the bed for a while and every now and then, between my chores and my work and my daydreams, I wander into the bedroom and lie down on sheets that smell like us. I squeeze between my fingers the quilts that are worn and rumpled and soft with their secrets. I touch the headboard and trace the places where your hands touched while I watched, remembering the way you arched off the sheets and asked for what you wanted and we gave it to each other, again and again and again. Then I lift the sheet to my nose and remember how you were breathing hard, your chest rising and falling under the crisp white cotton as you pulled me close to your side and yawned the way you always do afterward, the way I expect, the way that makes me laugh and tease you. Typical man, falling asleep already? And we both laugh because you are not typical; we are not typical, not at all. It was this sheet, actually, this one that I pulled over us after the love happened and before the yawn, the one that I buried my nose in when you said that one little thing that made me blush like mad. I think of it now and I blush like mad again, a blush that goes from my ears to my nose to my chin and down my chest, even right between my legs, for though it made me shy and subtle, it also made me excited, to know that you can make me do such things. When I lift the sheet to the line, your hands are on me and I am startled into a silent cry, dropping the clothespins from my lips one by one, all three of them falling to the ground but one catching in the folds of the sheet on its way down, smoothing out the wrinkles. Your hands are on my breasts and your body is against my back, my spine arching against you by instinct, the breeze picking up and snapping the sheets already on the line, your sunglasses catching in my hair as your lips touch the back of my neck and make me gasp out loud. The sheet wins. It brushes the earth uncertainly for a moment, but as your hands roam and your voice whispers, the sheet drops to the ground, its<b> dampness </font></b>picking up every little speck of dirt and lint and cut grass, and my hands are cool as I touch yours, as I feel your fingers move on my breasts, as I feel them seek and find nipples that have hardened at your touch. You are whispering things, inconsequential words that don't matter nearly as much as your breath tickling the fine little curls of hair at the nape of my neck. You are pressing into me and now your hands are moving down, sliding under elastic and cotton. You expect to find satin but you don't. Your laughter is warm against my neck and the sheets are cool under my knees as we fall to the ground together, your body hard against my back and that certain part of you even harder than that, harder than in recent memory and oh my is that saying something. And suddenly I know why. The wide-open expanse of green, the sky of blue whipping the sheets on the line, mellow sunlight heralding a perfect summer day, and the neighbors are one step away from seeing what might make them envious or might make them furious but will certainly make them stare, and you like that. You like the motion of my hips as I rise up under you and you like the way my clothes look against that jewel green, you like the way my body looks without them, and you like the way I say your name slowly at first and then faster. Louder. If those neighbors were to come running, what they would see is this: Your body above me, pressing me into the sheets below, the white and blue of the cotton that cradles us like the bed inside that window, right over there. Your shorts down just enough, the white against your tanned legs, my own legs wrapped around you as we rock back and forth. They can see nothing but everything all at once, the motion giving away what is happening down below, the globes of my breasts pressed hard against your knit shirt, the shirt you didn't take the time to remove because part of you needed to be in part of me and that need was too great. They see your sunglasses falling on the ground and your lips on mine and your hand in my hair, then your hand over my mouth as you rise and fall against me, harder and harder, leaving the impression of our bodies in the damp earth that smells clean and warm and close. They see the sheets snapping in the wind above us and they hear the sounds, the moans and the cries and maybe something else, something that makes them blush and retreat back into their own houses, feeling chastised for watching yet being turned on anyway. I can imagine that our place there on the grass has led to their own places: The man who kissed his wife's neck while she did dishes and eventually they were covered in soap suds on the floor, or the woman who calls her husband at work while she is playing with the vibrator that he doesn't know, until this moment, that she owns. I can imagine those things in the back of my mind where I will think of them later but not now, no. Not now. Because now your muscles are moving under my calves and your breath is harsh and your eyes are on me and you can see right through me; you can see the pleasure before I can feel it and you smile, that way you do, that cocky and arrogant and sauntering smile. And suddenly I don't care who sees. They can stare and pull out their cameras and urge us on. They can chide us with their glares. I don't care anymore. All I care about is that feeling reflected in your eyes, the eagerness of you, the way you move faster and harder and deeper all at once, knowing what that will do to me, what that always does to me. My cry shushes the birds in the trees above us and for a moment in time there is nothing; it all stands still, an hourglass tipped on its side while my voice hovers over the sheets and rides on the wind. And then you are right there with me, your body not moving now but buried deep, your head hidden against my bare shoulder. You make that sound you always do, that thing that is uniquely you, reserved for me and only then do I know that you do care if someone is watching; you do care what they see, because instead of a cry it is a whisper, that one part of us that is sacred and special and not for anyone else, the way you say those things you say when you slide off that edge of pleasure. And you whisper it, so only I can hear. The damp grass is wrapped around my fingers and the soil smells dark and secret when I lift my hands to the heavens and laugh out loud under you, opening my hands and letting the earth go.  |
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Thanks Irish for sharing your secret smile. Your story was very lyrical and brought back a rush of memories of hanging clothes as a kid and stealing kisses from the pretty neighbor girl hidden between the hanging sheets. Few pleasures in life come close to the smell of freshly washed laundry scented with sunlight and fresh air.
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