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At Her New Suburban Home In Rome
She is still not accustomed
to the absence of shackles and the collar;
the absence of ringed tags that pierced her lower softness.
Sometimes, distracted, she still moves
as if to accommodate them.
But they are gone, and he is dead---
the bastard who imposed them upon her.
Sometimes her nakedness is still
an offering of humbled, enslaved submission,
and not the expression of her natural beauty:
but the stockings have done much to change that---
(gold silk, translucent along each leg,
but opaque around her heels and toes;
made to her exact measurements
by a most cunning craftsman on Cos)---
and when she is wearing them, wearing only them,
she is somehow more aware of herself
than ever before when enslaved.
Tonight, as she reclines against you,
sheltered in your embrace and therein cuddled;
and the candle's glow accentuates
the shape of her legs in those stockings;
her nervous apprehension is assuaged
by the gentle, sometimes playful, caress of one finger---
yours, that you have dipped (just a bit) in honey: gliding
over her lips (both upper and nether);
over her tongue and the tips of her breasts;
over the private cleft beneath soft pubic hair
(and, from there, a soft moan vibrates
in her throat, like a kitten's purr),
even to that humbled place
her buttocks modestly conceal;
even along the contours of
her toes, sheathed in the dark silk's softness.
Wherever she has been hurt, or tortured before,
the honey touches, and reassures her "---never more,
"never again." She will probably never fully forget;
it still disturbs her dreams in sleep, sometimes.
The welts and bruises have long since healed.
The brand may fade, in time, so Luke, your physician, hopes;
but it will never be entirely gone,
although entirely defeated
by the new life that she has with you---
so Luke declared, and with him, Mark
(both of them here in Rome to help and comfort Paul),
on the day you wed her, in sight of the gathered church.
Starward
[jlc]
