Performed by Val Cole

POEM:

I write a lot about intimacy. I write about my understanding of it. Using cannibalism and feasting as metaphors for sex. About bruises and teeth as symbols of love. Of fighting and commitment, all things both cruel and kind. But what I don’t write about, is the empty echoes of shuddering starvation that comes from years of neglect. Craving and aching for touch, only able to seek a mere fraction of feeling from family and friends. I am celibacy and disgusting longing made flesh. Love given form and family. I am Agape, made from the sweetness of Aphrodite, blood and foam. Each one, a thing that slips always out of touch, a fragment of memories and fondness. |

I am the voyeur that watches. Hidden in the corner of the house, half covered by wallflowers and wind-faded wishes. Dandelion hands reaching for my own version of the sun and always stopping short. Watching on at scenes of intimacy, constantly grabbing the remote and rewinding before the moment can end. An ever-desperate loop of time and loss. Sun sets and cloud hidden lies. My skin prickling with goosebumps. A rash of allergy and need. I am burning in an empty house, having long lost the keys. |

I am the knowledge and the history of sex, unwilling to begin such a resentful dance again. Things learnt and lost through experience and pages I hate. I hate sex, I hate touch. The longing and anxiety that hangs behind each movement. The atoms that haunt the spaces previously held. And yet, I still crave, with every drop in my human body. Each pull of desire drawn from my breath-strangled chest. I find myself repulsed, even as I creep closer to that
ever-living edge. |