My Inner Thighs, Striped Like A Tiger

My fingers trace them lovingly

I wear them like a badge of honour, though I didn’t always. They cut across my inner thighs — veins of gold in marble. As though a large cat became too playful, and stroked me with claws too roughly. You might not even notice them, unless I encouraged you to look closer. Unless I invited you to touch them, reverently.

Some may call them stretch marks, though I like to think of them as my tiger stripes. Words have so much power, to wound us or redeem us. To steal our strength or fill us with desire.

I choose the words to make my reality. I choose the words that help me love my body as it is.

My stripes appeared shortly after my first flow, like rivulets left by heavy rain to trace their marks of womanhood, recently arrived. I remember the feel of my youthful body, burgeoning from a tender awkward shoot into one with enticing new curves. Off-kilter and coltish with energy and yet oh so exciting. I remember sliding my hands over my tiny new breasts with curiosity, my nipples suddenly awake like never they had been before.

Now I trace the tranquil stripes from time to time like braille, wondering what secrets their ripples tell my fingertips, what delicious innuendos. They feel extra sensitive, or perhaps that’s just the thin skin, easily tickled by even my own touch. I play upon them gently, feather-soft, like fragile harp stings, so that they will sing for me.

I touch them adoringly, my tiger stripes.

Perhaps one day I’ll get a woman who reads palms to tell me the subtle but sensual story that they write. The riddles they hold. Do they speak of desires I have yet to discover? Lovers I’ll meet; encounters around the next curve; chances I’ll take? For they are love lines, of that I have no doubt.

Perhaps they hold the lyrics to a song I haven’t heard. They certainly have their own sweet melody, sometimes a solo, sometimes a duo, improvised, and expanded on.

Are you a musician? Can you touch me tenderly enough to make me hum?

I imagine the palm reader tracing my lines with wonder, utterly enchanted. I anticipate where her questing fingers will travel next, what questions they will ask. I know I try to hold still but already feel myself trembling. I imagine my flushed face, biting my lip and closing my eyes.

“Tell me everything,” I whisper.

My body is full of untold tales I have yet to discover, profound treasures as well as delectable traps. My body, growing and changing, undergoing metamorphosis continually. Shedding layers, waxing and waning in the light of the moon, dappled by shadows even in the dark.

I am a landscape of infinite exploration (or was it revelation?). My skin, rippled softly like the surface of a pond, a little disrupted. Waves of desire, waves of pleasure. What stirs within?

The undersides of my breasts, hidden from sight, now also marked with the signs of my motherhood. I stroke my lines lovingly, possessively. Signs of my sacrifices, my discoveries, my power. Mine, mine, mine, I purr like a tiger. Mine to touch, mine to savour.

I’m glad I am no longer smooth, unmarked by life or by love. My body writes a history with its lines and stripes and scars, beautifully won from many battles (if fought only with myself). Beautifully asymmetric, exquisitely unbalanced. Wabi-sabi thighs, tempestuous in their transience.

My tiger stripes are fingerprints: uniquely captivating. I will not be substituted, I can not be duplicated. Irreplaceable. And if only to myself, irresistible.

Our distinctiveness allures. When you think of your favourite lovers, are they bland, airbrushed into uniformity? Or is it their quirks, their sudden silly surprises, their bent second toe or their crooked nose or their unibrow that delighted you the most? Something made awe-inspiring and endearing, something made marvellous because you are the only one who can see its charm?

Thighs squeezed tight or spread wide, entwined or set free, my hieroglyphics tell of ancient mysteries, spells that might be cast. Abracadabra, or is it open sesame?

My inner thighs so tender corduroy flower petals tiger lilies slippery when wet.

Their texture invites touch; they beg to be stroked, admired, celebrated. Carved into my skin, the lines draw a secret map that can lead the adventurous toward my temple, should they wish to worship there. A narrow pathway to my pleasure. The journey just as enticing as the destination.

My racing stripes, now, the tiger no longer tender but prowling, purring, pouncing. Ferocious and fast-moving. Wild and wolfish. My heart racing too, keeping pace. Tracing my stripes, moaning for more. The waves grow turbulent, my lines rumpled like the sheets, twisted underneath me.

I am the tiger, these are my stripes. The night belongs to me.

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