Beneath its rebuke we claim our sex

I am disappointed when
My thighs resemble dough

From lassitude or the dreaming void

I know not

While others jog I find ways to hide, and years bring encroachment
I am disappointed when stretchmarks form and breasts once firm and fine, fall
As if the hour, prescriptive written, perforation, was

all along a trembling, inken fate

Only in your arms
away from dull gaze of waxen youth

yet to taste harsh glare of life
Still blunt in their unlidded perfection

Was I ever so?

Only in you, I find solace to unburden these stored shames
Bidden me by my role as woman
The unkind hand, who beckons us close to fire
That we may touch a moment of glory

Then slow descent to nowhere visible

In my head of aches, I hear the cacophony of iteration

Women over a certain age
Sexless, sagging beasts of burden

We laugh over my fears
Our respective flaws, rubbing each other
Tenderizing that, which believed itself perished
And was alive
Beneath its rebuke

And when you bring me out of my shell
To kneel to the sun god, without need for apology
I see not those things

Or the artificial glide of time

But feel
Feel your fingers

Deep in my belly

Sense your mouth
Folding bliss in her eternal recline
Taste the syrup of us, in the temple
Then
I am disappointed no more
A fire bird loose in my body
Such pleasures, no child can find
We lift together, in our mutual ecstasy
Emboldened by the dream to be free of chains

Two of us
Released from the grip of words
Threshing at the gate, with the symphony of a female’s sex
Greater than anything that can be crushed
Our fever, mighty in her conquer
We cry as one, our voice raw with awakening
For to be pleasure, is to know
The Gods

No you do not own this moment
Bashful world

For we have transcended the hand of man
We
Who are
Woman
Claim
Our

Sex

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One hand

At fifteen a lewd boy, only 5’5 asked;

Will you pose for me with your legs spread?

She hadn’t shaved in three days, the stubble rubbed the backs of her calf where she pressed against enamel bath

A maelstrom in her eyes instead of pupils

He said; good, good, excellent, just like that … ba-aby

Now … Open them

And she remembered the first time she unfurled

Like those Chinese paper flowers that grow in water

A warm rose bud disturbed by prying fingers

She recalled the way unwanted thumb pealed her exposed

A fruit chewed on before ripening

The sting afterwards

Like she’d dried out all her moisture and hung like a salted fish to be slapped and dismissed

If she gave this boy, with sweat on his lip instead of hair, his hand down his pants yanking something terrible, a rolling storm, tattooing bruised landscape

His way would become her path

What would be next?

Can you scissor yourself over my friend and lower down like a stray bullet?

We’ll make money and you’ll have value

I’ll take care of you, afterward you can pretend it didn’t happen

We’ll smoke away the taste and I’ll move inside you until you release

Regret

It’s easier to prostitute yourself when nobody has your back and you didn’t learn how

To save yourself, to feel your worth

The sabotage within, so achingly familiar

If I do it’ll be like every other time I ruined myself over nothing, you say

Feeling deserving of the pain, shame is a funny fellow, makes you quite attached

When you’re adrift and running on empty

Who knew how easy it was to ruin a child?

Set in place, steps of greater sabotage

She could feel their sticky fingers on her thighs

The voices murmuring, it’s what you deserve

Sickness in a learned desire to be debased

On her knees being ridden like a horse, the riders

Grabbing her innocence, one handful of hair at a time

Til she was all used up and another empty set of eyes

Waiting for the next fix

She saw herself at thirty, dying in an empty room

And the boy who encouraged her now, high on himself and the vigor of youth

Didn’t know how easy it would be for her to tumble down the rabbit hole, he only thought of

Getting his cock sucked and how he could brag if she’d pose for his fantasies

She wasn’t his, she didn’t want to be the next hole, willingly bent over

She wasn’t a plastic doll or his fist, she didn’t exist for him to spank himself off

Her image was sacrosanct, her body inviolate

Her legs weren’t going to open and be his willing whore

Just because she felt empty inside and his thin flattery pretended to assuage, all the pain and losses

That wasn’t her path

He didn’t get to see her center or hold her up for inspection

The fine line between loss and lost is not so fine

She stood up for herself for the first time and learned

What we do, matters, impacts us, stays like a cancer

Life already hard, she needed all the breaks she could get

It began with leaving and not looking back

At the boy holding a camera in one hand