A Naming of Parts

Stroking her – there –
more pleasingly than she can ever remember,
he enquires, all mock-innocence:
'And what do you call it ...
this treasure?'

He might as well
have pressed
a panic button ...

Ransacking her mind,
like a passenger
fumbling for a lost ticket,
she seeks a word suitable
for this moment ...
for their mood ...
for his opinion of her.

Vagina? Too clinical:
after all, they are not biologists.
Pussy? Too twee
for the lover she longs him to be.
Vulva? No, no,
who uses a word like that?
What of those other terms
she remembers from
her adolescence?
Too coarse: what will
he think of her?

But then ....
'Cunt,' she murmurs
and somehow –
by lengthening the vowel,
by softening its consonants –
she strips the word
of all its guttural crudity
and it sounds
musical...
beautiful ...
magical.
'Cunt,' he whispers
admiringly
and his fingertips
glide over and into her.
Yes, she thinks,
when his lips sing the word:
it sounds as good
as it feels.

Curling her fingers
around him
(in the way she has learned he loves),
feeling his blood
pulsing against her palm,
she asks, wide-eyed,
wistful and grinning:
'But what do you call it ...
this ... this work of art?'

'What do you
want to call it?'
he counters, and his
eyes never leave her.

He might as well
have pressed
a panic button ....