Juxtapositions

A hemp rope is an interesting thing.

It still remembers being a plant, does a hemp rope, in the feel of its fibers; it doesn't have the harsh impersonality of one of those plasticky bits of cord. Its harshness is the rough remembrance of personality, the twining knottiness of life. Its abrasiveness is just like people.

And there's a softness to it, too, hiding in beneath the rough like a secret that it doesn't want to admit to until it knows you better. It will hold on, twining against itself like an embrace, the gentle snugging of rope against rope, rope against skin, coiled and winding in this trail of holding on.

The rough affection of the rope dances against skin as the memory of a touch; here wound around a side, there twisted around a breast, running along the neck like fingers tracing the vein. It shifts with each breath and teases the flesh into awareness, and then another touch can author blue fire in the nerves with the gingery lightness of fingertips.

The rope is a danger, wound as it is, restraining as it is, and it holds so gently, with its light caresses and promises of security. There is flight wrapped in its coils, the loosing of emotion, of trust, of the energy that burns in eyes that answer questions with nothing but the raw emotion that will not be bound.

Still and trapped and held close and loved and free.