Taste You

At the best of times one might say I had a casual interest in my life. At the worst one could describe me as pretty fucked in the head. Something sapped away my energy, dulled my brain. To call the feeling numb would be an understatement; I felt nothing. The girl nattering in my ear beside me, the boy promising in my bed, I told myself daily that I loved them. I cared about them. But I didn't know why. I guess it was better than being alone. Alone my sensations retracted, leaving only a dull thump in my chest.

Apathy is lying on my beat-up couch all day watching the clouds drift on by and the world bustle down below me. How I envy them. They rush and dawdle and laugh and cry and live. They have a purpose, a reason to get out of bed every morning. Numb is being still for days until my hair sticks to the cushion and I drag my body to the shower, leaving slick stains behind me. I felt nothing. I was nothing. Until there was you.

You were the white-hot poker that stirred my embers and coaxed my body to life and I met you in the grey rain outside my therapist's office. He had failed for three years to move me to any emotion besides boredom and I still clung to reality hard enough to stay a free and regular nuisance to him. It was a Thursday and I had ducked out of my group session for a fag. I asked you for a light. Arrogant prick, you didn't answer but looked through my flimsy show of togetherness. And you stubbed your own cigarette out on my arm.

You knew from the minute I parted my indifferent lips what I needed; what I craved. I had felt nothing because I did not know there were men like you in the world. You melted me. You taught me to feel. None of that psychobabble about expressing myself, telling strangers if I felt happy or sad this morning. None of those bullshit lies about my relationship with my mother. You were more real than that little man behind his oak desk. More real than the swarming crowds around me. You taught me to truly feel. I feel ecstasy when you tear me open. I feel bliss when you sink your teeth into my skin. And when you throw me around I feel simply happy.

That first night after you left I returned to my couch but I could not watch the people anymore, not now I knew what life tasted like. Instead I ran a bath. Steaming water met freezing skin and I was close to recapturing the moment. The scissors hung languidly in my hand. Elegant silver with deadly little points. When I had soaked for long enough I carved your name across my yielding flesh. Crimson swirls in the dirty bathwater. I only wish your name was longer.

Bite me, scratch me, pull me, break me. I am yours for the taking but whatever you do take me hard, please. Mark me as your property. The lines on my hip, the bruises on my thighs, the welts on my arms; you made me a heart of burns. Don't ever quit. Fill our lungs with black treacle tar. Your smoke strangles, lingering forever in my hair, on my clothes, in my bed. The shape of your mouth blooms bright on my marble breast. Each new scar awakens a new part of me.

Thank you for my resurrection.