#mfncb

[returntomytilene]

I want to die as I lived, between your thighs.

Natalie Clifford Barney, Women Lovers, or the Third Woman, originally written in 1926, translated by Chelsea Ray

[returntomytilene]

‘I miss your body, its magnificent pleasures, its long vibrations like mine . . . The sound of water when you were getting ready . . . The outline of your legs on the bedspread follows like a dream path . . . I miss having boutonnieres to send you, cigarettes to bring you, pocket money to lend you . . . I miss the evenings when you were drunk, and I helped you undress . . . Your demands and your kind words, all the more charming for being full of mistakes! . . . I miss every morning when I arrived before you awoke . . . I peeked in the door and saw your curly head on the pillow, your body nestled beneath the sheets . . . You awoke so softly, nothing hurried you, you murmured a few unintelligible words, a few syllables of a dream . . . ’

— Natalie Clifford Barney, Women Lovers, or the Third Woman, originally written in 1926, translated by Chelsea Ray

[returntomytilene]

From near and afar I know how to love your beauty, and your legs that bring you and take you away. And your feet that make the earth beneath them important and light.

Natalie Clifford Barney, Women Lovers, or the Third Woman, originally written in 1926, translated by Chelsea Ray

[returntomytilene]

‘Her legs coiled around my boots that kept them apart. Her belly wanted using: drunk on slavery. And it took all the ruts of the universe to satisfy her. Her cry rose and faltered and suffered the joy of her depths: “Take me! Take me!”’

— Natalie Clifford Barney, Women Lovers, or the Third Woman, originally written in 1926, translated by Chelsea Ray

[returntomytilene]

‘I was struggling, my breath against her breath, my body against her body, when she changed her mind: she seized me and, from such depths of her femininity, forced a possession on me that was, unfortunately, perfect!’

— Natalie Clifford Barney, Women Lovers, or the Third Woman, originally written in 1926, translated by Chelsea Ray