tigersaint

the twenty-fifth night:

i lay a bedsheet soaked through with my dried sweat and cum and every scent of me on the floor. i walk around it, barefoot, in circles.

i look for a pattern in the stains, but there is none. like everything else, they are incidental, no design, no purpose.

the only meaning they have are those that i give to them.

i undress and lay down on the sheet, feeling where my skin touches and the spaces in between. my shoulders, my ass, the backs of my thighs, the backs of my calves.

i begin to drag my fingers lazily along my skin, thinking first of him, his long fingers and large hands, the way my hips feel in his grip, the difference in our size. he is over a foot taller than me, i could climb him like a tree. from his hip to his knee is nearly the length of my arm. i love taking his large feet in my small hands, to kiss, to lick, to marvel at their sheer size. when i am underneath him he has complete control of me just by virtue of his strength and the way his hips slam into mine. he could snap me in two at his whim and there would be nothing that i could do about it. that he is at once so brutal and so gentle--sucking my lips as if they were the sweetest candy as he drives into me until i am screaming "please", not knowing whether it i am begging him to stop or to keep going until i am completely bruised and exhausted--this excites me in a way that i have rarely experienced.

and then

i think of the woman who is currently my desire. the one i long to smell, to taste, to break open like ripe fruit. i want to eat mango pieces off of her body, using the pieces to write poems of invisible sweetness along her skin. poems for me to taste as i explored her, blindfolded and spread apart for me so she could relax and let me take care of her in any way she wished. slipping slices of fruit in her mouth before kissing her, my mouth fresh from between her thighs, so she could taste herself as i taste her. sliding my fingers inside myself and then feeding them to her hot mouth, biting her lips as i grind against her. leaving bite marks on her breasts and hips, on the inside of her thighs. i imagine waking up with her tangled in sheets like this one, of open windows with homemade curtains and tying love letters around her neck, written on small thin sheets of paper, folded and sealed with glaze, tied with string. i imagine undressing her slowly, kissing her roughly, tasting all of her. the way her hard nipples feel against my palms,

i draw my legs up and pull the sheet between them, spreading them wide. i feel myself through the fabric, clearing my head, thinking nothing but its stained white, letting my smell drive me forward, touching myself in the familiar ways to make my climax come in strong waves, so i can soak the sheet through.

when i have left a fresh mark i climb up on my knees and straighten out the sheet and grab my brush. in long slow lazy script i write the following on top of the stain:

" 'Separation'

Your absence has gone through me
Like thread through a needle.
Everything I do is stiched with its color.

-- W.S. Merwin"


i sit at the edge of the sheet, naked legs folded against naked chest. i set my chin on my knees and smoke a cigarette as the indelible ink dries.

i haven't decided who i will give the poem to.