Wrinkle

The day was really beautiful. It was a good day. It had little wrinkles at the side of its mouth from where it was used to smiling, or smoking a rollie out of a window like things were easy and lazy. Its sky was clear but well lived, and overall it looked like my mother does when she gets out of the bath and stands there looking at her body, muscular, almost humming. 

Summer days and clouds always do make me think of my mother. I'd written a sloppily fictionalised autobiographical story when I was 16, centered on a metaphor where the dawn passing was her wringing out the water from laundry with tough hands. I think there's something there, a god corpse where each electrical impulse is a gust of wind, something incomprehensible and massive. Mama, why did you have to be an anti-vaxxer as well as bear the world? 

In the morning I worked for 3 hours on my laptop, imaginary work. Then, like the memory of my mother had taken me back to before I was ashamed of my need, I was able on this day to let myself long for people. I sat in the green park and longed. Smoked a Camel and longed. Wearing a little white top where my nipples were dark against, and longing even for myself with a deeper emotion than the surface eyes of men. Although, problematically I like that too, and make sure to lock eyes with each glance, perhaps similarly to how I make eye contact with drivers when I step out on a red light. I'll unpack it, I'll unpack it later. 

Someone new to me who I love because they've read all the same books that I have, except hates them (or vice versa), has recently passionately argued for Andrew Long Chu's definition of female (from the eponymous Females) in which female is "any psychic operation in which the self is sacrificed to make room for the desires of another." Written out like this I see it, and then I want to spit it out in disgust. Chu has a pithy phrase for my nausea too, of course, that "Everyone is female, and everyone hates it." 

I can't even have sex without checking if my hollowing out is turning the other person on. And, like, I have good sex, but it's a bit of a circus mirror room and I don't feel quite in control of where it begins. Even when I'm topping.

I want to spit it out because it tastes like my own skin. The book is absolutely ridiculous. Ethics isn't committing to a bit - ethics is - well, I'll figure that out later - Anyway, I push my breasts against my top like the ribs will leave a spore print, like the sexiest thing is where my sternum meets the wide air.

For propriety's sake I won't relate all the details but when ----- puts their ------ in ------, I feel ------

 (4 months later with this same person, I wrote this:

Always ask

Can you hear how wet you are

Yes

Can you hear that I’m holding you up?

Yes

Can you feel my fist right sized for your heart

Teeth looking for new salt

Hear me summing to use you

Polished copper

Dish which I will serve myself from

Yes

Heart

Hear

Hole

 

Yes, Yes

-

 

After and before I lie on top of you and

Hum like I’m flying without moving

Making in the autumn a hive in a glass

I still think I could kill you if I kissed you too

What does it

Say that I want to)

 

Today was a good day, so the lines of my own desire met no resistance from myself or anyone else, and in the warm air they hung taut and sung when pulled, each a different note and pleasing to the ear. I wanted - I am allowed to want! It all seemed without risk, like it truly was just lines drawn in the air instead of possible fractures. I wanted my partner to come back! I wanted to turn a cheek and to be met with a kiss; to jump. A baby in a world where a need can be met. 

 My wanting, erotic in Lorde's sense; creative, filling the space between unfulfilment and unrecognisation, between my own body and my internal self. Yes, I hope this summer to want enough, again, to make another world.