“Submissive” by Lauren Zuniga
All day long I expend
I hold together, I left up, I give out
I pour life for a food supply, irrigate crops in mouth
It is a rare occasion where I just take in.
So when he asked if I was a dom or a sub, I didn’t know what the fuck he meant.
I just knew I wanted to be the opposite of him so we could fit.
To be quite honest I would have settled for kissing his wrists.
Now I am a strong liberated woman,
My ex husband will tell you that you will never find submit written on these palms
But they are always face up and open ready to give.
According to Cosmo Men like a woman that can take control
So I have long memorized the erogenous zones.
The exact placement of tongue for the desired response
I could always make a man’s microphone sing some pretty damn good songs
But the really hard thing for me was to lie back and receive
He held me like an edge of the cliff holds the feet of the fed up
Like the sky holds the surrender of a falling body
He maneuvered me, like a canoe through crashing rapids,
My hips the stern, his hand the pivoting blade through water
I reached out to return the favor but he said, “No, relax. I don’t want you to do anything”
That is a move I do not know.
The move to nothing.
To be completely empty and open
To be effortlessly receiving pleasure without thoughts of strategy or counter
He placed my hands above my head
He pulled and pressed and bit like I was the last piece of fruit on earth and his survival depended on it
He consumed every inch of skin, every drop of juice
I didn’t notice any pain just the joy of proper use
There was a fretboard between my legs and a soundbox in my mouth
There were chords that never existed until he pulled them out
There were no chains or whips but I would have called him Master
Not because I felt I was less than him
But because I felt like he knew things about my body that I didn’t
Like he’d been studying it a thousand years and he deserved a fucking certificate
Like I was the eastern sky and I was the prayer man and he was the man that conquered the last square of a turbulent mind
Then he asks me, “How do you feel?”
I say “Alive”
I guess that makes me a sub whatever that means.
I guess I don’t mind being dominated if I can trust the dominator
I guess sex doesn’t really fit in boxes anymore
Gender and sexuality are words and images clipped from magazines waiting to be glued down on our vision boards
But they are always OUR vision boards because the way the were originally assembled does make sense anymore
We are un-definable
We are prisms of light
Shades of masculine and feminine looking for someone to bounce life off of
Looking for someone to give when we need to receive, to receive when we need to give
And when it is done right both gets done at the same time
Sometimes it is rough, like bone to bone, your insides cling kind of love
Sometimes it is candle wax on torsos or moonbeams on eyelashes
Sometimes there is no skin involved at all; it is just being to being.
Here let me hold that soul for you because you have been drowning in labels for so long that you have grown tired of survival
Here is a moment of bliss, a moment of aliveness
All day long I expend. I hold together, I lift up, I give out
But sometimes I just take in.
(via jaggedflow)
Arabic calligraphy for a tattoo in my Inbox. Drinking gin with lemonade and watermelon. Falling asleep to rain, waking up to rain. Dream that I am at the bottom of the ocean, then flung violently by a wave into the sky. After the wave another wave, of broken glass and ring pulls and plastic fragments, shells. Dredged up debris arching out of the ocean like a polluted rainbow to find my naked skin. Debris sticks to my body like magnets, until I am concreted into a mask. A body that stiffens and sinks. Whales always rescue me in my dreams. Sometimes I am on a boat and the ocean is a storm or a tsunami and whales swim up underneath the boat until the boat breaks up. Then I am in the water, swimming with them. In other dreams I hear a song I can’t translate and an old woman is tattooing my chin and lips black with a bone chisel. When I wake up I think if I live to be her age, I will get this tattoo. I am always armoured with lipstick. Nude lips don’t know how to lie. I lie with silence. The second dream I had last night was about rape, and the dream after that, and the dream after that. I seek out the thumb of a new master. I am prepared to beg: make my body forget, how does a body ever forget. His opposite is a good man I’m afraid to touch. The ruin I’ll bring him in my fingertips and mouth that itches like a vein remembering heroin. Drowning because it’s the only time I feel like I’m not drowning. Drowning open mouthed, my body rained in. I haven’t forgotten how to swim, I just want to stop.
Cyndi Lauper Fearless a cappella
I don’t know why I’ve never posted this version before because I listen to it all the time.
He is testing me in the same way I test people. Are they enough, are they strong enough for this? I am never enough for anyone that I want to love me. Or maybe I am too much. I want to bite and kick and scream at him. He says, you should get angry, don’t forgive me, why aren’t you angry. I want to soothe his body with the warm palms of my hands like I would a child. He is young and beautiful and his body is powerful but he is so vulnerable. He makes me want to protect him from darkness and hurt. I want him to use that darkness and ruin me as much as he can. When he is light hearted, when he smiles, it’s almost a shock. The nicest of surprises and then I’m not sure which side of him I like more.
He says, we should be very careful, I might go too far, I want to see you bleed, I want to see you cry, I might go too far. The boundaries I enforce are for his sake, not mine.
For someone I’m not in love with, I’ve already written too many poems about him. I gave up another man because he wouldn’t give me (the bratty sub) what I wanted. He didn’t pass. I have no tests for affection, happiness, intimacy, love or tenderness. I have spent too long with those needs as planets transiting around my body, until they are pulled away to another woman or I can no longer see them in the sky. I will love to come and the longer it doesn’t, the more I turn to masochism. I am more afraid to tell you all this, exposed, than I am afraid of any sort of physical pain. I am afraid to say out loud how lonely it is without love. I used to think it would be so simple. If you want to be tender with me, apply in writing. I’m starving.
He tells me what to wear and how to pose and my eyes burn the edges of his photographs. Since childhood I have been so self reliant that sometimes it is a relief to be told what to do. I’ll never let anyone tell me how to think. I want to tell you, I am often happy. I live up to the Joy in my name. I make my friends laugh. I bring light and love to the world. I nurture. I could make you very happy. I am just worn out lately.
A friend tells me, we need our poets. I cry. I want the friends who offer comfort and love to know that I am here, still breathing gratefully. I have retreated to the quiet.
Psychologically, I am already on my knees. I need to be annihilated with sex. I need the distraction of mistakes, but strangely, with him I feel none of the dread I have with past mistakes. Submission is the only way I have found to be physically and spiritually free. I create my own gods, but only the ones I can bare to see destroyed. He takes my instruction, he learns from what I tell him about how we can harness the dark. I have lived and survived worse and he helps me soothe some of it. I don’t belong to him and he doesn’t belong to me, but as much as I try to stay away I can’t give him up yet. I wait to fail a test, I wait for him to push me away like he does to everyone else.
We are broken mirrors to each other. My body is the tuning fork of his desire. He doesn’t make me happy, but he takes away enough of my fear that my body is an empty slate for happiness again.
Soon, in the time it takes you to have a change of heart about me, reader, I will write that it’s over.
He tastes sweet. In an explicit message, he observes, “it was like you needed it to live” and I want to reply, this is how I am born and born again.
This is the only time I’ll ever explain a poem to you.
(Source: youtube.com)
Last night I walked back into my room and the artist was sitting naked at my desk putting on foundation and lipstick in my makeup mirror. I asked him what colour lipstick (deep pink) he used and he said, “three different ones”. His lips look beautiful painted, they rival mine. My foundation perfectly matches his skin tone. I watched his fingers work eyeshadow brushes and paint his eye and cheek in a large blue triangular tear. I painted the other side in silver.
Then he painted my face, more gently than anything else he’s ever done to me. He said he saw some kind of Nordic woman warrior in my face. He was intent, patient, when I moved he’d command, “Hold still”. He told me not to talk so I wouldn’t ruin his precision. He worked in silence while I was lulled into a state of calm. He asked me, “This really turns you on, doesn’t it?” and I murmured yes as he traced a brush over my face. My face was hues of blue and purple and gold and silver and then he took a red lipstick and traced lines from my face, down my neck.
Later while I removed makeup from our faces he pulled me naked, backwards into his lap, put himself inside me. I don’t think I ever want to get used to his size, for that first thrust not to be pained and sweet. His makeup stained fingers left rainbows on my body.
Today I delight in and nurse small hurts, a tender throat where he held me down and choked me. His hands are so large they fit almost the whole way around my neck. Impressions of his bite on my neck and breasts, cleavage covered in bruises that will dictate more modest clothing choices for a while.
The backs of my thighs and my ass are covered in bruises and welts from where he took to me with his hands and leather belt, over and over. The largest bruise is where he broke skin and it bled. He flogged all the fear and panic that I’ve been living with for months, out of me. Today I am calmest I’ve ever been. I slept better than I have in months.
