Written for LJ Naruto100 community's 'poetry' challenge. Italics are lines from 'Since Feeling is First' by E.E. Cummings. Which is like, the best poem ever.
Disclaimer: Poetry not mine, Naruto not mine.
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Unwritten
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since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you
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"You know," she murmured, shifting on the bed to face him properly, one hand sliding under her pillow and the other tracing the outline of his exposed shoulder. "I've always wondered why you never wrote about me."
He chuckled, watching her with half hooded eyes. His hair gleamed silver from the shreds of moonlight that slipped in between the curtains; in the velvet darkness of her bedroom their imperfections were washed away in black ink, their scars (those that had never healed and those they refused to let heal) softened, blended into the dark sillhouettes of their tangled bodies.
"Is that a complaint?" he asked her huskily, voice rough with age and a weary sort of happiness.
She scoffed. "Like I'd want to be stuffed in between those silly young things in your porn." A pause. Then, in a slightly plaintive tone: "I'm merely a little confused as to why, given the way you've been hitting on me daily for the past decade, you never put pen to paper to write about me."
"And how would you know?" He pulled the covers up over them, tucking her closer against his chest.
"Sakura insists on updating me on what happens in every issue of Icha Icha."
"She subscribes to it?" He grinned.
"Nah. She's just keeping tags on what Naruto's reading."
"Clever girl."
"Anyway," she pressed on, unwilling to abandon her question. "I'm starting to think that -"
He silenced her with a chaste kiss on the lips. "You think too much."
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my blood approves,
and kisses are a far better fate
than wisdom
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Jiraiya wrote beautifully. His work was a mix of breathless fantasy and the memories of women he met over the years: he painted their portraits with words and brought them all to life with their pouts, their swaying hips and their smoky stares - the beautiful ones, the bitches with attitude, the whores, the innocents. All except for Tsunade.
Jiraiya never wrote a word on Tsunade.
"Because feeling is first," he murmured after she fell asleep on his arm, tucking a stray strand from her forehead. "And you hurt too much to be written." Too precious to be written, lest he stained her with ink.
Eyelids fluttered open, amber slits peering up at him amusedly. (Ah. So she had merely been pretending. Manipulative, crafty, sexy bitch.) "Getting sentimental, Jiraiya?"
He snorted, crossing his fingers behind his back. "No. Go to sleep, old girl."
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and the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids' flutter which says
we are for each other.
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Because some things cannot be written and some words can never be spoken. And so she will remain unwritten and those three words locked away, like poetry beating a steady rhythm in his heart.