Today’s prompt at Poetic Asides is “travel,” in any sense of the word.

I started out by reminiscing about a blue-and-black flogger I’d brought home from Amsterdam, but this is what remained on my screen once I was done:

Souvenir

Last summer, while in Chicago, I gave away
two pairs of long black satin gloves,
one which I’d worn to a party in Detroit
with a leather mini that now no longer fit,
and the other — I don’t even wear gloves
to rinse dishes, I don’t know why
I thought I needed a second pair
considering how I like to fondle olives
with my bare fingers, which I love
men raising up to their lips to kiss —
so that had been a stupid splurge

so it cheered me up, to see those gloves
on the hands of other women, both
beautiful as they danced, one who purred
as her velvet sheath rustled against
the scarlet folds between my legs

and while our fingers didn’t trepass
beyond self-imposed hems, I will
never relinquish that night, for
its sweet heat rushes back
every time I open my closet. The dress
is neither baggage nor keepsake:
to touch as we did was neither
a secret nor a sin of distance.
Yet, it speaks to me not only of Chicago
but of valleys I chose not to visit, and how
I travel with what-might-have-beens
mingling with my mementos of bandits —
those marvels that overtook me unawares
long before I acquired sufficient wit
to treasure whatever they would leave of me
once they left me behind.

– pld