Silver Slivers Upon My Tongue, or, Things I Think About in the Shower

As soon as he started playing, it all came back to me.  Blossoming in front of my eyes above the stage that held the single, spotlighted strong back of the man playing piano.

The two handmade bars of soap that you brought to me from the monastery in the woods.  One, a tar and clove and tea tree oil smelling rough cut bar : because you knew the smell of astringent and dirt turns me on, satisfies me.  This is something we have in common.  The second was plumeria, I imagine at the advice of your female friend and co-worker who went with you. (Such an odd presence she always had to us- advising you in such gendered directions.  I loved it.  You knew I got off on the feeling of my cock pressed against the inside of my perfectly pressed pants.  She knew that you should offer me flowers with a bowed head and open glass doors for me.)

I knew these two, thick bars of soap would be the last time I touched something that had been touched by your hands. Given to me by them. You produced them from your coat pockets. One each. Your hands were awkward. Uncertain.

How I would bathe myself with them in the shower. Savoring them. Wanting to save them, but not being able to.

I would take the bar into my hands
steam enveloping me
and
melt it into my breasts
around my nipples
letting the scent absorb into my skin
be inhaled into my lungs. 
I would slide it down my stomach
to the insides of my thighs
the backs of my thighs
up across my ass to my
lower back
around to my stomach
slide up my chest and behind my neck
where I would hold it
imagining you
holding onto me
one more time
the weight of your hand
behind my neck.


k.



(thank you to Nils, and company, for an incredible conjuring of images that night)
(thank you to refinery29 tumblr for assisting in finding this image from Anna Sheffield's lookbook)
(thank you to Alfred Hitchcock for the remnants of Psycho in my mouth and psyche, having watched it for the first time ever yesterday night.)

"I Looked Without Seeing, Like Someone Who Arrives at a Party From Which He Knows the Only Person Who Really Interests Him Will Be Absent"

What I've learned in the past few years is that I am no good at waiting.  I pretend to be. I distract myself with interesting jewels and objects to fascinate me. Sometimes in the form of paint, sometimes in the form of ink, usually in the form of images.  Those that make me salivate.  Sometimes, they are books.  Sometimes, they are people.  I learn leagues from all of them, and breathe in the scent of their pages and binding as deeply as I savor the taste of their skin- but I am waiting.

While I am waiting, I pretend that I am not. It is a feeble attempt to trick some superstition or dead relative my parents always told me would be watching me from above.  To outsmart them.

But I am waiting. And it is as satisfying as any self discipline can be.  Satisfying until the moment my throat opens, parched, sweat pours itself from measured skin, and nails reach out from my fingertips, finally, in unhidden want.

This torturous crumbling happens infrequently but
when it does
there is a pleasure in it's undoing that is quite
remarkable.

-k.





(title credit: A partial sentence from a story in When I Was Mortal by Javier Marías)
(photo credit: from blackmilk tumblr)

One Day, By Virtue of Dérive

It's still coming back to me.

The fingers he was shy about wearing the pages of a book meant for him.

Built for him.

Devoured by him.

The chalkboard paint that covered your kitchen walls and the pristine grocery lists you wrote upon them.

The only time you appeared truly at peace was while reading.

I admired this in you.

I feared it as well.

(pause)

A list of what I remember:

The swish of your hips.  The cut up menstrual pads in your bathroom.  The scent of flowers mixed with pine.  The shelf that held almost every work of Genet.  The pieces of paper taped to the wall telling your story of poverty and...heroin? I never knew which drugs you used. The black bands you got tattooed a few days after you met me to hide the tattoos you were embarrassed of.  You never told me what they were.  Two thick, black bands. One for your mother. One for your father.  They are still very much alive.

(pause)

I dreamt of the scar underneath your chin the night you contacted me. I had not seen it so closely, so vividly in so long.

How deceptive dreams can be.

I think of you often and always.

When reading
listening to music
walking in certain parts of the city.

It is strange
those maps we drew
and how they folded in upon me.

Zarina Hashmi, Journey to the edge of land (1994)

(title reference origin):  Dérive