The way you say brown shower, like it’s
a cute Mexican restaurant that just opened
& not the act of shitting on someone
(for money), I guess that triggered me.
It’s one thing to have casual sex, an entirely
different beast to be casual about sex,
to laugh about clothespin zippers,
canes, whips, nipple clamps, crops,
hooks, rings, Prince Alberts, leather masks
& all manner of dungeon tool in your drawer
I lack a vocabulary to describe. You’re my
fifth grade English teacher who gifted me
a tattered copy of Don Quixote.

I used to think it perversion: I owned
an aversion to sex in the shadows,
the kind of acts performed on, not with.
I never considered the glee of catharsis,
that tears might at once harm and please,
that red inflammation is worn with pride,
marks like trophies you point to and say
This is where I hurt; this is where I feel.
Like maybe control is a concept best left
to DMV queues & boardroom meetings.
When we fuck we are animals, blood
spilling on bathroom floors. Your skin,
your soul is made to stretch.

I am the vanilla in Neapolitan, but my white
abuts browns, pinks, melts together
if you leave me out long enough.
My manliness blurs when you push my knees
far enough behind my ears: a capsized turtle
resigned & delirious to my unseen fate.
Things look a little different from here.
Up seems like down, stoicism like weakness,
fingers like nails, the insistent screeching
of a chalkboard becomes a loving embrace.
So do it—embrace me, show me impossible
angles, let me cry in fevered agony.
When we’re done I’ll still have my feet
unless you take them, too.