“Sick Desires, These” by Julien Charlie
Poetry Pause is the League of Canadian Poets’ daily poetry dispatch. Read “Sick Desires, These” by Julien Charlie.
Sick Desires, These
By Julien Charlie
Youโve waited for stillness.
Room shadowed, twin bed sheets cool
beneath bare back. Youโve waited
for silence, for the master bedroom door to thunk down the hall.
Finally
alone with an under-the-skin itch
for flesh beneath fingers.
But youโre not alone. Not when you have your desires.
The kind that begin as you slide your palm down the curve of your stomach,
that bring tingling gooseflesh and rumbling warmth
that melts through your chest;
breasts and neck and cheeks hum with blood.
The kind that have you panting in the dark,
hand shoved down boxers
and you can smell yourselfโ
sex does have a smell, like seaspray over a crowded beach.
The kind that involve a man, any man,
with broad shoulders, gravel-in-the-motor voice,
steel-boned fingers that curl across your scalp
until he fists.
And thereโs that split-second burn
before he bares your throat, crooks spine
until your lower back screams white-hot for relief.
The kind that iron your belly to the sheets
as if heโs pinning you down,
maybe with his meaty hand against your crown, maybe
his gut anchored to your tailbone.
These desires.
These sick desires
youโre always caught with.
The kind that blip from your eyelids
when your door swings agape to a spotlight
with a hard-stare silhouette.
The kind that linger as residue in your stomach,
once simmering, now iced
but burns the same.
The silhouette beckons with shadowed fingers, lures youโ
no. Nets you,
tangles you with invisible twine cast especially for nights like these
(because even in your room nothing is yours, not even privacy).
The kind that strand you,
shirtless, before a man who has your eyes
and a face that belongs among the frozen scowls of antique marble busts.
The kind that leaden the back of your head,
make you bow under the weight
of your hunger for skin on skin,
whoeverโs sweat-slick skin it may be.
The kind that remind you, in that familiar baritone, that
these are wrong.
Copyright ยฉ Julien Charlie
Julien Charlie is a Queer writer and editor who grew up in Tkโemlรบps (Kamloops), and whose work appears in two Poetry Institute of Canada anthologies. He graduated with a BA in Writing from the University of Victoria, and was a Fiction Board Intern for the Malahat Review. Julienโs live performance background informs his poetry, which often focuses on the natural world and the human body.
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