Boy, I don’t know what reminded me of this, maybe my previous post about breasts or maybe it’s because I’m feeling a bit mildewed from all this rain. Anyway, once I was sitting at the kitchen table with one of my roommate’s sisters who was visiting. We were hulling and slicing strawberries for jam and some how or other (there wasn’t any berry juice on her chin or anything) I wound up licking her jaw line. And then her neck. And all the remaining available skin outside her cotton knit shirt with about a million tiny buttons down the front.

After a bit she unbuttoned her top button, giving me maybe three quarters of an inch more skin to lick. She or I would unbutton another button about every minute so and it took about ten minutes to get to the tops of her nipples and maybe another two to uncover them completely, then another ten after that to get to the bottoms of her breasts. (I don’t know if we ever made it to her navel.)

We weren’t lovers or anything and we didn’t go much further than that, but it was wonderfully sensual in a goofy sort of way to be lapping this unfamiliar girl’s torso in a hot sunny kitchen while everyone else we knew was at work.

Anyway, it’s almost Groundhog’s Day, celebrated in northern climates as the time you begin to notice the sun’s returning. (In other words around here there’s some actual daylight at 8:00 in the morning and after 5:00 at night.) Knowing summer will return with it’s berries and light shirts with tiny buttons gives me the little boost I need to appreciate how beautiful this time of year can be, with it’s austere trees and layered clouds and the muted, almost subliminal, but genuinely glorious colors in the sky, the earth, and ready-to-bud branches. Snowdrops are already up. It won’t be long. I won’t really miss it all when it’s gone but I’m going to enjoy it while it’s here.