Marked

“He said it with everything he did, every touch, every caress, every physical pleasure he bestowed upon me. Give it all to me. Give me your will.”
― Kitty Thomas, Comfort Food

“Who taught you to write in blood on my back? Who taught you to use your hands as branding irons? You have scored your name into my shoulders, referenced me with your mark. The pads of your fingers have become printing blocks, you tap a message on to my skin, tap meaning into my body.”
― Jeanette Winterson, Written on the Body

“Everywhere he touches is fire. My whole body is burning up, the two of us becoming twin points of the same bright white flame.”
― Lauren Oliver, Delirium


-----------

I sit here tonight by the window, listening to the breeze play in the trees, and I can’t help thinking about the way I am changed, marked by Shepherd, as a Wolf would mark his territory, his property, his own. I spent the weekend in his arms, in his presence, and his fingers became brushes, his teeth became a chisel, every implement he chose became a pen writing love as though in ink upon my skin.

You see... tonight I am sitting on bruises. As I shift in my chair, I am acutely aware of welts and scratches, knots and abrasions, all evidence of his love for me -- of the exquisite and intense pain he has given me as a gift, like a sparkling jewel or the gleaming silver collar that will soon grace my neck. Each tender spot reminds me that if I trust him, he will hurt me. He will push me and stand guard over me. He will watch me break and set me free to fly. He will gather me into his arms, putting me back together, centered and whole. I may leave him to fly home, entirely too soon, but I will bear these marks in my flesh, long after.

This makes me inordinately happy, but this is not all.

There are other marks that never fade, marks that I carry with me in my heart, on my soul, marks perhaps more profound, more indelible than any he could place on my flesh. I am forever changed by the marks none else can see. For sometimes, he kneels before me -- my Sir at the feet of his girl -- and he takes my face into his hands. He counts the ways he loves me as though he were Shakespeare, until he is confident I am assured of his commitment to me. He kisses the tattoo on my wrist that bears the names of my children, and the wedding ring that represents my life with Husband. He thanks me for sharing my family with him, and for remaining true to them, to who I am beside them.

He affirms my poet heart, encourages my writing, my creativity, and my emotion, even when it’s messy and can frustrate us both. He asks about my goals, and makes them his own. He makes room and shares wisdom so that I can grow. He offers patience that seems it may never end. He serves me. He believes in me. He accepts me. He loves me just the way I am, and invites me to stand alongside him, for the rest of our lives.

If you could see these marks, you would know, I am not the girl I was when Shepherd and I met, three years ago. Perhaps you can see the results? I am more me, more his, more at peace. I am forever changed and changing, and I carry his marks in my heart, my soul and my flesh.

I am truly his, and that mark will never fade.

Into the Dark and Darker Woods

This post is a response to Sir Lostpup Grey Shepherd



The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
-Robert Frost


Into your darkest corner, you are safe in my love, you are protected. 
I am the openess you seek, I am your doorway. 
Come sit in the circular temple of my heart, & let yourself be calm.”
-Agapi Stassinopoulos

There is pleasure in the pathless woods...
-George Byron

“Darkness soothed. It softened the sharp edges of the world, toned down the too-harsh colors. With the coming of twilight, the sky seemed to recede; the universe expanded. The night was bigger than the day, and in its realm, life seemed to have more possibilities.”
-Dean Koontz, Midnight

“I trust only you and the dark always to look at me so honestly.”
-Meredith Duran, Wicked Becomes You

----------

Who am I?

I am a poet-girl with a raven spirit, who flew headlong into the sky, to find my freedom, and meet myself.  I am a grateful dreamer, a child-of-the-wild-blue-yonder, with a big, roomy heart, and a hunger to know and love.  I am both strong and weak, young and mature, confident and insecure, graceful and awkward, woman and child. I am a girl who at nineteen, found myself in the middle of an unplanned pregnancy, and spent the next two decades serving my family as mother, educator, wife and friend.
I loved that life, and chose it on purpose.  I love my husband, children, grandchildren, and the life we've made.  Yet, when my babies were grown and my life became my own again, I needed to stretch my wings and find the path that had always been mine alone.  I have been trying to mind
my steps and be thoughtful about where they lead me ever since.

I think I have always been a poly girl, though I did not always know it was possible to be so, nor did I have the words to describe or label what it meant.  My heart craves people.  I am fascinated with their stories, their lives, their emotions and their reasonings.  I ache to know and be known. Being invited into someone's heart and their inner world feeds my heart in ways this word-girl can't even begin yet to describe.  This journey to find others who crave what I do, has been rocky thus far.  The path has been rough.  I've been wounded and bruised and have had to learn to heal and be tough.

Enter the Wolf.

One day I decided it was time to go hunting.  I felt alone, and alien, and my experiences with loving more than one had been so very painful.  I knew I needed more, and so I went into the woods to find like minded beings who understood my need to know and be known.  I found Him, and perhaps He was also hunting for me, and my life is forever changed.

He is not what you might expect.  He's a Wolf and a Shepherd, fierce and gentle, dark and light, sadistic and loving, simple and complex.  He works harder than any man I've ever met at loving those who are His pack.  He makes mistakes, and makes amends, and He gets it right.
He fights for me. He is the man I trust with every part of who I am, and He celebrates me fully.  He loves my darkness.


He is my Wolf and my haven.
He lives by the promise to hurt but do no harm.

He includes me in his pack.

He includes me.

        I am welcome. 

               I am wanted.

                          I belong.

I am at home in His woods, they are mine.

When the civilized world -- where darkness is a diversion locked away in boxes -- becomes too loud, too demanding too much to bear, I know I can come home to His woods and find that I have a place.  There is a space in His heart and world only I can fill. I can escape to Him, and find my peace, my center, myself.

And so, I look to the future - into a new year - into a long life in His heart and at His side, and I know I belong to Him.  He owns me, has earned my trust, and I am His ink-smudged poet-girl with the heart of a raven.

At his invitation, I will keep exploring.  I will fly, I will hunt and  play. I will grow and live and inspire words and wonder and the flight of others.

At the same time, I will forever be bound to His heart and life. Soon I will wear his collar, I will be tethered to Him as a bird to her Falconer, trusting Him to train me, care for me, protect me and love me.  I hope to always make Him proud and happy He invited me in.

As he said, you are welcome in our forest.  I know there are other girls out there like me, who long to find themselves in the dark and darker woods.  I hope if you are that sort of girl, and you are reading here, you will be encouraged by my journey.  There is a great big, off-the-beaten-path place for me, and for you.  I hope you won't stop searching until you find it.

To Submit

“I, with a deeper instinct, choose a man who compels my strength, who makes enormous demands on me, who does not doubt my courage or my toughness, who does not believe me naive or innocent, who has the courage to treat me like a woman.”
- Anais Nin, US (French-born) author & diarist (1903 - 1977)

I am not a submissive.

I used to think I was.  I used to think I needed to be a submissive, but what I really need is to submit to one man "who compels my strength, who makes enormous demands on me..."

Shepherd says it this way, and it makes sense to me:

"There is a difference between needing to serve somebody and finding someone you wish to serve."
-Sir Lostpup Grey Shepherd

The thing that I love and seek in a power exchange dynamic is the reality that something, someone in my life is immovable, strong, demanding.  I am a strong and intelligent woman, independent, determined.  I don't have an overwhelming need to serve others, I do not have an urgent need to please others.  But in my life, I have always sought a strength that exceeds my own.  I need to submit.  In that submission, I will serve someone by choice and desire, but not out of need.

"I do not want to be the leader. I refuse to be the leader. I want to live darkly and richly in my femaleness. I want a man lying over me, always over me. His will, his pleasure, his desire, his life, his work, his sexuality the touchstone, the command, my pivot. I don't mind working, holding my ground intellectually, artistically; but as a woman, oh, God, as a woman I want to be dominated. I don't mind being told to stand on my own feet, not to cling -- all that I am capable of doing -- but I am going to be pursued, fucked, possessed by the will of a male at his time, his bidding."
- Anais Nin, US (French-born) author & diarist (1903 - 1977)

From the time I was a child, I never knew a man who took the dominant role in a relationship.  I am loved by two fathers.  They are both submissive.  Let me stop here, and say that submissiveness is not a bad trait.  It is neither bad nor good.  It simply is.  My fathers are happy being submissive.  It is how they choose to express their love and devotion to their wives and children.  I admire and love them for it.  Both of my husbands, are/were submissive, much like my fathers.  By choice, they act and did act in ways to please the dominant personality in their relationships -- me.  I am not complaining.  I need and want my husband to be that person, it makes him happy, and it makes me happy.

But I also need a strength under which I can submit.

I want to push against a wall and find it immovable
I want to pound and find it solid
I want to know that I can’t win
I want to fight with all my might, and lose,
I want to kick and scream and stamp my foot
and find that it won’t work. 

I want to know that I will not be pushed away,
will not be rejected, abandoned, screaming silently in the night. 

but who will be the wall
who will stand firm
who will hold me til it’s over
and still be there?
Alice, quoted by Poppy St. Vincent, in her post 'The Fear and Loving in Everwhere'

You see, I am messy.  It is who I am.  I am emotional, and passionate, and impulsive, and creative, and reckless.  I want to explore, to learn, to experience, to live!  I am impatient, and immature and hungry.  I can be an adult.  I can be responsible and reserved, I can lead and control.  But there is in me a girl, a bird, a poet, that wants to fly headlong into tomorrow, hair tangling in the wind and heart pounding in my ears.... driven and undisciplined.  

"Without discipline, there's no life at all."
-Katharine Hepburn

Yet, I require discipline. I am like a falcon needing a falconer to tether me, teach me, protect me and let me fly.  I need the structure, the boundaries, and the reassurance that I am "owned, taken, safe, wanted...someone's so much that even I am second to them." Those too are Shepherd's words.  He is wise.  He is right.

"To be completely woman you need a Master, and in him a compass for your life. You need a man you can look up to and respect. If you dethrone him, it's no wonder that you are discontented, and discontented women are not loved for long."
-Marlene Dietrich, quoted by Master Obsidian's slave, namaste in her post Humbled Females: Reclaiming the Feminine Mystique

I have found that falconer.  He has a strength of character that moves my heart, and makes me want to please him.  He is my immovable wall, firm and resolute.  He is the strength to which I can submit myself, and he loves me.  He sees me, body, heart and soul --- all of me. He knows the woman, the girl, the hunter, the prey, the poet, the explorer, the child. He celebrates me, and wants to take responsibility for my well being, my growth, my submission.

I have found someone I wish to serve.  By his definition, and now by mine... I have a slave-heart.

"If you are a slave, it is what your heart said.  You did not get a vote."
-Sir Lostpup Grey Shepherd

The journey ahead frightens me.  It will not be easy.  I have already shown my ability to panic, to push and  fight and frustrate.  I have suffered consequences that I both hated and deserved.  I have been called to account, and instructed to stretch and grow.  I was not rejected, not abandoned for being too much.  He is still here.  He did not move, did not leave.  I am still here, still wanted and loved.  I have been shown a bar that is higher than what I have yet attained.  He sees my potential, and wants to see me reach it, so the bar can be raised yet again.  He believes in me.

"When [one who submits] enters into a journey with a Dominant, she is never quite sure of the path He will choose and the challenges she will face. The dance is first and foremost a dance of trust. Given this most precious element, she knows there is no limit to the places she will go under His hand. This is true only because He cherishes her and will not take her places she cannot go …"
-Fringe of Darkness tumblr

I trust him. I choose him. I submit to him. 

I belong to Him.

Sir Lostpup Grey Shepherd

What we do flows from who we are.
-Paul Vitale

I want to unfold. Let no place in me hold itself closed, for where I am closed, I am false...
-Rainer Maria Rilke

Daily I learn - sometimes painfully, other times with glee - that mine is a path never meant to be paved.
-Jeb Dickerson

We must be our own before we can be another's.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

----------

My Shepherd, my Wolf, my Sir recently wrote the following piece and sent me a copy:

Prologue:

It is odd to think I would find myself with another label. I was always the person with another name, another label and I was never the one to choose. I have now forged my own 'found label'. It started five years ago as a simple pun, but it has become me.

Who I Am

I live in the woods, in the shadows, in the places others do not like to go. In these dark places I have found myself, my Mistress, and my pack. In these woods I have learned to hunt and to play. They are traveled by only a few and fewer still make their home here with us. In the day, I see you looking into my woods wondering what is beyond your sight, asking why I do not want to live in your bright world where the dark is locked in boxes and expelled by the lights you burn every night. In the night I see you sneaking into the woods from your cleared, cut spaces. What you do not know is that I see you looking and I am watching you. I see your tracks in my woods. I smell you in the dirt and… sometimes when you enter my woods, I will find you.

When we do meet in my woods, you should know who and what I am. I am the wolf you mistake for a friendly puppy; you will not guess my age, size or identify my markings. I am not what you expect, am unlike anything you have seen before. I am the source of the tales others repeat in warning whispers. My name, like my form, will surprise you in its substance. Like all labels my name is meant to convey something in a few words. Who and what I am is a story that is told within my name and my full name is long and complex, which fits me.

I am the Lostpup who once enjoyed looking around and going over the next hill, until I could never return home and did not wish to turn from the adventure. Like most youthful creatures, I needed a strong guide and protector. She helped and continues to help me learn, flourish and grow into the creature I was born to be. In exchange I serve and love her. Like all puppies I choose fun and play over conflict and struggle. I play the games of the dangerous woods I found myself within and sometimes it is not safe. Sometimes too, the world forgets that behind the grin and the playfulness are fangs and the power of a predator coming into his prime.

I am a wolf and like all wolves, my pack is my life. My life’s work is leaving a strong healthy pack. My pack is made of the people I love and hold dear. They are a part of who I am and what I do. I am the Shepherd who leads and cares for his pack. I do this out of purpose not pride, although I am proud of my pack. I gain pleasure from the pack, but the pack is not for my pleasure. I work to lead the pack with integrity and to enrich its members, but I not for my enrichment or their attribution.

I am like the mist and the fog within your perception but not part of your codes or frameworks. I am Grey; I am neither pure nor evil. I am neither selfless nor narcissistic. I demand that my needs be filled, but not that others needs be excluded. I will hunt and revel in the acts of the hunt, but I will not waste what I take or take what I do not need. 

I have given my freedom and heart to my Mistress, and now I have been given leadership and responsibility for others, at their request and in exchange for their freedom. Now, just as I answer to the lead of my Mistress, I hold leads as well. These ties embrace and bind me. I cherish them because they help me remember that I answer to my Ma’am, that I am responsible to my pack, and that my pack gives to me. 

Feel free to visit us, but remember who and what I am.

Sir Lostpup Grey Shepherd 

----------

Every time I read through it, I smile.  I'm reminded of the reasons I love this man, and how grateful I feel to be included in his life.  I've written here before about my journey to discover who I am, about the urge to explore darkness, to take that after-dusk path into the shadowy woods.  When I read this piece the girl inside of me wants to cheer and celebrate the relationship, the man, and my good fortune.

Soon, I will post my response to this declaration, at Shepherd's invitation to do so.

This is a cross post on the Kink and Poly blogs.