Symptomatic: (self) love in the time of…

I feel the night pressing in on me, swaddling me closer than the blankets I am wrapped in Hot… Why am I so hot?…. and my response in my half-dream 1:00am not-awake state is to both snuggle deeper Fire… into the cocoon and gasp for breath against the Jeezus, my skin is on fire… overwarmth.

Fever…

My skin is prickling, sunburn tight. Am I sick? My burning flesh feels raked by the soft-smooth cotton of my sleep clothes Do I have a fever? and the pebbling of my nipples Why are my nipples hard like this? I’m not freezing, I’m burning up… is painful. 

It’s the pain – sharp, insistent, compelling – that pulls me toward wakefulness.

Toward the roar of blood in my ears, toward the echo of my heartbeat jumping a massaging thump against my clit, riding the seam of my pajama pants My throat is dry… in a damp hello OhMyHellO, I’m wet… in my stretch to wake.

The stretch wakes an ache – sweet, delicious – and the painful heat beseiging my body turns to a ball of flame licking my skin.

I reverse the sensations in on themselves, arching against the pull-tight fit of my sleep tank and engaging my thighs, turning discomfort into memory: the pleasure-pain of suckling remembrance sparking between nipple-tip and cotton thread; the re-imagined scissor stretch of fingers twisting, the push-wide velvet rough of ghost hands felt through recollection in the way only a dark-heat night can dream.

So hot…

In what feels like forever over a matter of press-swirl fingertip minutes Do I have a fever? a wave of pleasure washes over me, cooling me in its slack tide pull I’m not sick, am I? back to the refreshing waters of sleep.

Four hours later, I wake, the alarm a jangling reminder of gray-dawn reality, and wonder…

Was I sick?

If so, I have to admit:

It’s been ages since I’ve felt this well.