5.05.2010

What the Longing is Like/What the Desire is Like

I confess that the desire plays me like an instrument; this longing feels like the sound of octaves: a deep, root note, heavy, with a tectonic mobility that feels monumental. A feeling of an ocean washing at my edges, cooling, relentless, an erotic ecology: waves and sand. The second note of the pair, singing together, the higher twin, a note that rings with the reverie of a choir, with pathways that contour among the beating wings of birds. This note, a reverberation, continues, I can feel it inside my chest, I can feel it stirring certain memories, repetitions that my longing dances with. The note playing inside me incurring the lightness of raising anchor--trusting, finally, the winds, admitting a faith that the sea is best to offer.

Yet this musical longing can also know; this desire has a potent sentience that directs me, moves me across distances that I am anxious to travel. This longing gives me an electric sense, makes the wine that kisses my lips doubly-savoured, the evening stars doubly-lived. I experience twice: once for you as a place-holder, for everything I experience narrates the story of your absence.

And so, my longing is also something visceral, to be seen, and your absence, the absence of the eyes most wished to be looking, conducts my performance of desire. My skin feels like anticipation, the moment before the stage lights and the play begins, that imperceptible interlude is where I inhabit, voiceless but desirous for that particular audience of one. "I want you here in this house" is akin to my body's prayer; with you so distant, the chanting whispers become more insistent, and the shadows in the candle-light more suggestive.

My hands always feel empty, they want to know what your hands are doing. My body knows a secret it's unwilling to divulge, it wants to tell me where you are in this world.

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