Solitaire

By Judith Butler

Monastic living comes to me as plainly as my breath

(Its quietly erotic — the rise and fall of the chest

akin to the soft undulation of the Great Blue depths)

I don’t feverishly anticipate a seductive touch to my thigh

My hands do not itch for a hot-blooded high

La petite mort

I die, I die, I die.

I am an afterthought in the chasm of my fantasies

Mouth, hand, flesh, flushed, pink, please!

The ink of my ragged watercolour body leaks

from the vignette and makes a home in my chest

Intentional erasure, I opt to forget.

Imagine not my mouth, my lips, plump around a wanton ‘oh’

Nor the curve of my waist, the flesh of my fingers, the bones bending below,

Nor the roll of my eyes, the sweat on my breast, or the feline arch of my back

The opening of my ribs, pleading salaciously to be cracked.

(Look, I beg, but do not see me.)

My perversions are private and tucked safely

behind the black-brown-blue of tightly closed eyes

In the deep black velvet of stifling dark

Onanism becomes voyeurism, startling and stark

Lips, hushed breaths, and the call of sweet parted thighs

Nameless faces, faceless names

I slip slickly to the core of the maelstrom of sighs.

She looks not upon me — in this, I delight.

My peak, I project onto somebody’s face.

I care not for their name, nor the time, nor the place.

The body I’m in is no receptacle for desire,

But a vehicle to deliver a torch to the pyre

An endless voyeur of unyielding lust

I shake off my shocks, and I rise on coltish legs

I remain untouched.