To My Body

To my body,

I have seen you at your worst because of our disability. Unable to stand for long, unable to walk for long, struggling to go up stairs. I have seen you bare and at the mercy of doctors, needles, and nurses. I have seen you eat the same thing over and over, because of your restrictive diet, until you were sick of it. Until you never wanted to eat again. I have witnessed your effort to stay awake when all you want to do is sleep, I have seen your silence when your pain becomes too much to bear.

I have washed you, fed you, held you when you’re in pain, and been gentle with you when your fatigue is overwhelming.

After all of this, how can I share you with another? How can I offer up your secrets, your needs, and your struggles in the hopes that they are understood and respected?

Yes, I’m asexual and aromantic, my boundaries with other people are different than most. I don’t want sex with others, but I still want intimacy and pleasure. You are delicate as a disabled body, which makes self-intimacy all the more important.

I want to give you what you need. I want to care for you with kindness and warmth, so that you are not doomed to a life of clinical touches. I want to care for your overall wellbeing by giving you pleasure when you want it. There is no shame in giving yourself pleasure. You deserve to feel good when you feel bad so often.

I will learn how to care for you as best as I’m able. Our intimacy will be a priority for me. Making sure you feel my fondness for you will be my long-term goal.

Self-intimacy will become my most sacred practice. Because without you I am nothing but stardust on the wind. It is because of you I am connected to this material life. And it is because of you I have learned to be kind and thoughtful of others.

At your best, you are my inspiration. At your worst, you are my responsibility. I will not neglect you ever again. Our intimacy will deepen until it cannot be fathomed by any one else.

All my love.

Grapes

In quick and eager succession, he brings grapes to my lips, one at a time, and I bite off just a little bit of the end of each. These ones are crunchy, bursting with sweet water.  They make a snapping sound between my four front teeth, and I drag some of the green skin off with each bite.

He gets to keep the bitten grapes, putting them in his little dish, taking them to his little cage.  He licks the spot where I bit, before letting the whole grape explode inside his mouth.  I listen to him smacking on the fruits behind the barely sheer blue curtain with embroidered flowers that i hung outside the little den.  I smile and breathe deeply.

This is how we kiss today, this year. This is how he keeps his mask on and keeps me safe from sickness but gets to taste my tongue.  This is kinky, sensual, delicious, and fun.

He crawls out when he's finished, to kneel at the foot of my wheelchair and bury his head between my knees, arms stretching to rub my fingers. I oblige and rest disabled hand in his, and let my fingers be stretched and admired.   

For a moment I am not uncomfortable in my body. For a few minutes my wheelchair is not just an abusive companion, but a pedestal I chose.  I look down into hungry brown eyes and feel wrapped in adoration. 

This is how we fuck this year. Petting, massaging, finger feeding, nibbling on grapes and skin of him too.

He looks away and sighs silently.  I feel the fullness of his satisfaction and know the spell is working.  Breath, magic, power, play.  Bursting like a grape, he asks "Can I make you some more tea, Goddess?"

FUCKING WITH THE LIGHTS ON

i 
love 
fucking with the lights on 

i wanna 
SEE yr 
asymmetry & 
discoloration; 
freckles, moles, 
marks; that tat- 
too u got when u were 
young & 
never thought id 
see 

wanna 
run my hands & 
mouth over yr 
stretch marks & 
acne scars; 
cellulite & 
rough skin; 
grip the hair on yr 
back & shoulders, 
feel the weight 
of your belly or 
flesh stretched 
close to the bone, 
stroke 
that thing 
the doctor doesn’t 
quite know what to call… 
want to 
honor the 
parts of you

weve 
shamed  

fucking in the 
dark turns 
bodies into 
secrets, hands 
groping, hips 
grinding, tongues 
licking bodies 
into organs the 
renegade sex 
of our queer 
ancestors 

but 

tonight 
i don’t feel 
inserection 
when we are 
inside eachother but 
i cant see your 
Eyes 

if i am fucking 
you i want to be 
fucking YOU & 
if you are fucking 
me i want you to be 
fucking

Me  

my desires disable me - casual disabilities as love access

slurping frozen distilled agave plant core at pastime location rebecca’s with a former lover i had not seen in months, voguing and contact improvising our way through gush’s dance floor, having the kind of weekend that makes you feel alive again. a few days later, all i can offer myself is a chipotle bowl and root beer in the front seat of my truck, and a few minutes of strap-on porn masturbation.

it took everything in me to write this week. i am so fucking sad. i am having a time where nothing is enough. not enough love, attention, accolades, or “let me know if you need anything” offers—too ashamed to utter what it is i actually want/need/what’s the difference(?)—damned if i do/don’t vibes.

here, i retire as a hinge, an axis between two full swinging doors—the people i love love each other more than they love me. i want my own door. right now, i don’t need life saving platonic love—that i have an abundance of. i’m in need of the fuck me so good it regulates my nervous system kind of love—disabling me to make being in my body more attainable.

squirrels are out, spring touches my back evenly massaging glacial and rapid movement, time’s spread chemically accurate. the philosophies of my contemporaries led me to the 

grid—supported, angularly latching—including and transcending line by line point by point reflecting color. our bellies touch when we hug—a subterranean intimacy i cling to. the invisible weightier than the terranean, felt sense prior to material order of operations like when you don’t know the name of your record but it knows you.

language doesn’t end here. i’m convinced if i were touched more, i’d do less, and wouldn’t feel the need to be so much—the space between our colliding gagged by all my little projects. desire and need cannot be disentangled¹ in the same way the hollow air earnestly begs to christen my cheeks—your desire for me gently coaxing me into cellular relaxation. i got my first grey this week, a humbling attunement.

---

¹ amalle dublon taught me this in a talk facilitated by mae eskenazi

Unruly Bodies, Divergent Minds - A Portrait Series

Unruly Bodies, Divergent Minds is a self-portrait series that explores pleasure, fat liberation, and sensual healing through the perspectives and experiences of disabled queer folks. With Unruly Bodies, Divergent Minds I venerate my body that doesn't fit the mold of what society deems acceptable. Bodies that are too fat, too sick, too Black, too foreign, too queer, and too femme. I venerate those of us with minds that have infinite ways of developing and relating to the world. I wish to highlight all the ways queerness and disability are always in-conversations with one another. The disabled experience in the world--especially the queer world-- is one of disruption and dissonance that is counter-normative to the ways of existing in the world. By magnifying the different ways disabled folks find joy, passion, pleasure, and attraction is to highlight a new way of expressing their sexuality. There’s not enough representation of folks with disabilities enjoying their life--beyond being an inspiration for able-bodied folks. This project is about centering us--our life, our sexual expression, their embodied experiences.

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Pain>>Pleasure >>

My partner at the T would lay in the hospital bed
with me

My desire flecked eyes
met their flushed gaze
I so desperately wanted to slip out of these white walls
&into their selvedge denim

a soft breath caught between us

Hands filled with flesh
moved with the dexterity
only a drummer would know

every stroke struggled with silence
suppressed moans
expressed as
thick sweat rolling down my
xylophone spine

play my broken body like a vintage guitar

electric

glide up the neck
gently awaken all my senses
using tricks they learned before it broke

Tremolo on C

Suddenly, with emphasis! I exclaim!
“Oh God!! I’m so hot!”

&I was

My body was more familiar with pain
Than with pleasure
&it was sooo good to get reacquainted

Communication

Words are taken for granted
Thrown into the atmosphere
Annunciation is cast-off
Without a care of who can hear

To articulate a joke at the right time
Without an awkward pause
How I long to express my emotions for you
At the time when they are actually true

A funny idea, insightful observation or a, fleeting fantasy
They all want to shine while they’re still fresh in my mind

Rebellious Daughter In The First Year Of Pandemic

Rebellious daughter in first year of pandemic:

Radical daughter disobeys parents’ wishes. 

Shows their tits on the Internet. 

Elopes with two princesses and a princexx. 

Orders men’s clothing. 

Adorns their body with custom gold-plated jewelry: 

Adventure yields the underwater treasure. 

Daughter died drowning in a past life.

Singalong daughter was gifted air by the makers:

 Friends fall in love when they sing.

Daughter dreamt of being in a boy band. 

Now she’s a pop star. 

Now he’s trans. 

Outlaw daughter is doing just fine. 

Anxiety daughter makes everybody sick. 

Bloodline curdles with a violence that refuses to end. 

Daughter grows a name.

As a child, 

he’d pack his bags to play make-believe runaway from home. 

They use all pronouns as an adult. 

The freewrite turns into the author’s shadow. 

The writer looks back with their thumbs tapping a screen. 

Artist archives what nobody remembers. 

Only the real ones believe. 

The only ones who don’t believe still call them daughter.

They don’t want anything they don’t already know. 

And they don’t know me.

After; Sick Femme Love Liberation; Knowing

AFTER

an early summer morning of deeply hot sex
lying limp and sweaty on the bed staring at the ceiling
while my lover fetched tea and toast
topped
with high country choke cherry blackberry raspberry darkest purple preserves
i thought of the swallows in the mountains
the path of their flight
how i’d stand in the pasture look up to the sky get lost in their swirling dipping circles
their deep blue wings and golden bellies
i could smell the air the trees
could feel the open space in my chest
i could feel the mountains
in my chest this lover brings me swallows in flight
tears streaming like a slow breeze
memories touched in my belly
made golden
made deep blue circles of light
topped
with tea and toast
spread thick with sweet purple fruit

---

SICK FEMME LOVE LIBERATION

show me your pain
hold it up to the light of my own
let them touch
lean linger
love the familiar bones of honesty
the world hits hard
breaks bruises and terrifies
delights in our masks of able
while we drown
wearing down our bones to sea glass
so let’s gather up our sea glass survival
spill all the well worn translucent remains
out onto the kitchen table between us
and weep salt
in our knowing
no masks

---

KNOWING

when I allow myself the animal

sadness the ocean deep sobbing

the low moan to holler with my knees to my chest

mouth open toward the sky

I’m catching myself in my own embrace

a crip love song

a sink and retrieve

where once again I’m all I’ve got

but for a slow falling minute

that is only

a beautiful thing

Three Ways Kink Helps Me Access Fulfilling Sexual Experiences and Relationships As an Autistic Adult

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As an Autistic person, the way I do most things tends to be a little different from the ‘norm’ and true to form, my sexual interests and desires have always been somewhat, unusual.

BDSM (an acronym meaning bondage and discipline, domination and submission, sadism and masochism) is one of my most enduring special interests, and it’s also one of the main ways I experience sex and sexual attraction.

BDSM meets a lot of needs in my life. Some aspects of it are important to me on an almost spiritual level as a deep part of who I am and what I desire; some aspects are a fun form of recreation, almost like a perverted hobby; and other aspects form the basis of some of my favourite ways of connecting with others and having close and meaningful relationships.

However, as I’ve learned more about my disability and my Autistic brain – and begun to accept and articulate the accommodations that I need in relationships and sexual contexts – I’ve realised that the joy I find in my kinky proclivities isn’t entirely random. While I don’t believe that people need to explain why they’re kinky, and personally I don’t see these things as the ‘reasons’ I am kinky, they are likely part of the reason why being kinky brings me so much joy and provides such an important source of fulfilment in my life. What’s more, I think the things I am about to talk about, explicit and tailored communication; sensory accommodations and roles and responsibilities based on your unique needs – these are all things that any person can take away and apply to their own relationships and sex life, particularly people who need specific accommodations to be able to feel relaxed and comfortable in their social and intimate relationships.

1. Kink and BDSM usually involve a lot of explicit communication

It’s important to note at the outset that not every kinky relationship or encounter involves stellar communication, there is nothing inherent about kink that makes good communication magically happen. However, in BDSM the stakes do tend to be a little higher in terms of the personal risks we take on and this can encourage people to engage in more clear and effective communication.

We also find that in kink relationships, there are less social scripts that can be followed or relied on. Anyone who does BDSM in real life for more than five minutes will usually be able to explain why the popular representations of kink that do offer a socially recognisable script, like the notorious Fifty Shades are effectively useless as relationship templates. If we want to get the things we actually want out of kink and have mostly functional connections with other people, we usually have to find ways to articulate what it is that we want. While this is essential in all relationship in kink it tends to be foregrounded more and take place earlier in the relationship. This helps me create the space I need to ask for accommodations, whether they are physical, sensory or relational. It also helps me avoid up front any situations where my needs aren’t going to be accommodated.

In my experience, kinky people also generally tend to be more willing to explore non-verbal and alternative forms of communication. While it might be a tired cliché, a ‘contract’ signed between dominant and submissive partners in a relationship can be a way of communicating in an ongoing way through a written medium, which can then be discussed, edited and clarified in writing, through conversations or through a mixture of both. For me, while I’m not currently party to any contracts of the kinky kind, having documents of other sorts that reflect different aspects of my relationships helps me immensely as someone who can have a slow processing time, or more ideas than I can possibly share at once, or suddenly find themselves without the ability to communicate verbally.

2. BDSM practices help me manage my sensory needs especially during sex

In BDSM terms, I am a ‘switch’ which means I both bottom (receive sensations/experiences) and top (give sensations/experiences).

Both topping and bottoming play important roles in helping me manage my sensory needs, both generally and during sex specifically.

When I am topping, particularly if I am also playing a dominant role in the ‘scene’ or kink experience, I usually have a say about when and how I am going to be touched. I can restrain a partner so they can’t touch me at all or make rules about when and how they are allowed to touch me.  For me, this is a crucial accommodation, allowing me to avoid sensory overwhelm. It also helps me relax and feel more comfortable getting into my body, knowing that I am not about to be confronted by a type of touch I find dysregulating.

Bottoming plays a different role in my sensory world. Certain kink activities, for example, rough play that involves being pushed around, painful sensations, repetitive sensations like flogging and spanking or being restrained are all powerful ways to engage with our senses, particularly our proprioceptive and vestibular senses that don’t get a lot of attention. In this way, kink provides much needed input into my sensory diet, helping me stay better regulated throughout my day-to-day.

Additionally, my sensitivity and ability to lose control to sensations actually becomes a positive when I am bottoming, because my main job, in this context is to receive and react to sensations. Most tops thrive on the intensity of reactions, and as someone who is acutely aware of all the variations and varieties of sensation –  be it pleasant or otherwise – I sure can deliver. Knowing that in a given scene my role is to bottom and give in to sensation, helps me be a fun, reactive player rather than a ball of nerves who is socially and sensorily overwhelmed (and therefore withdrawing).

3. Structured relationships with clear roles and responsibilities support my inner need for things to be simple.

My Autistic brain thrives in situations where there’s a lot of clarity. I also have a bit of an inner need for things to be black and white. Unfortunately, in almost every situation I have come across in life, black and white thinking gets me into trouble – except in kink!

Black and white thinking helps me get deeply into dominant and submissive roles I might be playing in a scene or a relationship. It also means that I thrive in the kinds of structured relationships that often feature in BDSM dynamics. Feeling like I clearly know what my role and responsibilities are in a relationship – and even having written documents to refer back to – creates the space that I need to relax and feel like I understand this social situation, for once in my socially awkward life. This allows for a kind of relaxation and calm that creates space for me to ‘unmask,’ that is worry less about whether I am ‘coming across’ as an Autistic person and focus on connecting with someone.

***

While this is just my experience, I think that these concepts can be helpful for anyone who wants a better sex life, particularly disabled people. Having more explicit communication, and experimenting with non-verbal or alternative communication; learning and managing your sensory needs (yes everyone has them!); and finding ways to structure your relationships in ways that are reflective of your unique ways of being are helpful foundations for any relationship, even if you’re not tying each other up.

Letters to My Joints & Letters to My Body

Letters to my Joints

Joints – the locks and facets of my body, holding up this tender weight and allowing for mobility.

You are sacred and sore today, and I somehow want to find a space in my heart to hold you with deep gratitude as well as leaving space to move through the sadness I feel when you ache.

Today, I will care for you like I might care for a child. I will hold you in my hands and let my partner celebrate both of us.

You, my unique and tender facets, working hard to release red clumps of stagnation in order to elevate and tonify puddles of cool water and release in the spaces between my bones.

I believe in you today and every day. We are on this journey together – we are obtaining peaceful mornings alongside one another and we are caring for this form and its milky parts together and we are strong, soft, resilient and capable – ready to give and to receive. I love you my little tender systems, amen.

---

Letters to my Body

Caring for you is hard work.

In the morning I wake up and I cradle you into the day – I shift you softly onto my yoga mat and I ask you what would feel good today. Sometimes my mind wants to fight you on your answer – it wants to push so hard until you just give in and push yourself so hard that you end up aching.

I used to go to the gym everyday. I was so scared that if I didn’t you would scream at me – showing me with your symptoms – your bloated belly, your anxious thoughts, your tightening neck, your aching back, your electric spine – that you disagreed with my choice to rest at home.

I thought that you would say hateful things to me if I didn’t have the right thing for breakfast – if i shifted my routine just slightly i though you would rebel and would yell and toss and turn and struggle and not feel beautiful or sexy or calm or capable.

One day, when the years of this cyclical pattern of unrest and assumption had finally turned into undeniable bloat and dis-ease – I started to ask you questions instead of deciding the outcome of your response without your consent.

I would wake up into our pain and say:

Dear beautiful structure and being – what do we need today to ease into the day with peace and care

…sometimes you speak to me so loud and clear and other days I can hardly quiet down my fear voice long enough to hear your subtle/supple wishes and desires.

My dear body, I promise to keep trying hard to be soft – to love and hear your truest intentions and the sacred ways you stretch out and lengthen to your loved ones. I promise to look at the barriers that keep your honest needs from floating into my ear drums and into my heart, we are capable of peace we are capable of solace we are capable of grief we are capable of healing we are capable of abundant fluid we are capable of care we are capable of slowness we are capable of symbiotic inseparable communication and ease. Amen I love you.

Knots

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There seem to be more questions than answers these days as I heal 
I want to not hate all the people for the ways they’ve betrayed my body
I’m assuming you’re assuming I mean sexually as most of us do 
First rule of crip sex is not to assume
What if I told you disability lives everywhere in the body?
That fluids freak me out and im ashamed of that?
That I still feel the hand on my right cheek uninvited?
Feels like a part of me separated forever an i wish it back daily 
I dont fuck to numb i fuck to feel
Uncoordinated an free an if we fall off the bed so be it 
I’ve done it just reaching for my phone

What if I told you disability an trauma live in the same building?
Separated by one floor

Elevator works when it feels like
My body works when it feels like 
Spend most of my energy walking stairs 
Its been four years lord
I haven’t practiced saying no as much as I want and i am ashamed of that
I want to tell you about the doctors too but I’m not there yet 
I want to cum in the arms of someone I love without crying but im not there yet 
I want to love and be loved in return before touch is even on the table but were not there yet

Haven’t located my sense of urgency 
Haven’t stopped bonding over borders 
Haven’t redefined desire yet
the answer is connection but still, there’s some questions about urgency i haven’t got to 
But I wrote about it under the full moon in my journal on my nightstand so we’ll see

And
This is not a witch hunt or call out
You have to preface that now 
But a body remembering 
A body living to tell a story
Fragmented an still whole
A body changed and changing 
I have to tell you these things before we lay down 
That remembering is re-membering
All tainted limbs come alive underneath safe touch
I have to tell you 
I’ve learned to channel my OCD through solid boundaries so you don’t have to worry about me getting up every 5 minutes to move the lamp
I’ll tell you a secret tho
Sometimes I miss the tapping 
And, I know control is an illusion 
But god I wish for it daily

I have to tell you some things before we lay down 
Cus I might need your help laying down 
Unbuttoning, unzipping, sliding off
Make no mistakes 
My needs are still strengths 

Everyday is a test 
Octavia, Saint of the impossible written into word
Says: “but there are new suns”

I can tell you 
I blaze best in bed
Me and my aches stay up all night swapping stories 
Whispering riddles only ribs can solve
I have to tell you this in case you’re an early riser
In case you think I won’t survive without you 
Me an my dreams been
non monogamous for a while 
I know how to shine alone 

I have to tell you this because I am not a broken thing

But I am permanently sore 
Smell of eucalyptus, lavender oil
Peppermint, earl grey, rosemary tea
Reek of 5 days no shower 
5 days no food 

I have a question for you
What you know about the nuance of submissive?
The blessing of a tongue between index an middle finger?
A head back a throat exposed?
A surprise spasm on half the body? 
What you know about lifting a body?
Albuterol after an orgasm?
About talking through mania?
What you know about me?
I have to tell you this so you are not surprised 
I have to tell you this so you know how to navigate a universe wrapped in flesh 
I have to tell you this in case you see the occasional star fly by an burn mid air 
I know death an she knows me well
Love,
I am all moon and madness 
The volcano an the lava 
An the green beneath 
An the burnt soil still, breathing
Listen, 
You don’t need to know how disabled people have sex to fuck me right 
Aint a article on this earth can tell you what I know about the criss crossing of pain an pleasure 
I’m telling you this
Cus I dont know you yet 
But if our skin so happens to slip between cracks, 
If we look up an find ourselves entangled together, 
If we promise to see each other as is,
If I caress your face an it feels like home to you,
If the suns rises an we still in bed, 
Would you like pancakes? Or toast?

Drifting to Bottom

I settle into the bed of passive sex like a leaf descending to the bottom of a pond, all of me liquid, languid, slow, luminous, still.  Once I was tigerish, licking, biting, pouncing, growling, tumbling, arched, riding the springy ribcages and hips of lovers I could climb on.  Now I have sex as plants do, petals agape for pollen; as snails do, one sticky wet part sliding softly, infinitesimally across another.  I have sex like a body of water, breath making nipples rise like the crests of waves, creeks emptying into my shimmering state of awareness through crevices, gullies, hillside torrents.  Rocking against the coast, tide by tide. 

Now I am infinite earth, potent beyond all things and nearly motionless.  Sex is a bead of sweat, dew forming on the curve of a leaf, a thigh.   Sex is the quiver of grass on an almost windless day.  I am a bed of clay on which your fingers drum like rain, furrowed by your tongue, penetrated by roots that grow strong because of me.  

I am the sea anemone, exquisitely sensitive and anchored to rock.  My most delicate pink-tipped tentacles suck, clutch, cling to what touches them.   I change color, rose to maroon to violet, blush, glow, burn, circle and dance in the water, wrap myself all around what comes within my one inch reach, and never lift myself up from my stony bed.   I am held down by tired muscles, topped by my own fatigue, nerve endings tingling with sensations, too exhausted to move, lickable, liquid, languid, sinking into the slick, soft mud, coming down from above, drifting to bottom.  

“Fucking Our Humanity Into Us”

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* a quote from conversation held between Nik Zaleski, Airos Sung-En Medill, & I.

(I Think We All Just Want Everything To Be Okay). My Existence Is Reckless Behavior.

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(I think we all just want everything to be okay). My existence is reckless behavior. Gentle gaze, honest lips, certain hands: it could get me killed. If they clock me first. Or if I fall for the traps. Fuck the suffering. I’ll fuck who the fuck I want, wear what the fuck I want, say no to whatever I want, say yes to the blessing that devours me. When my mom texts me to be “SAFE” she is asking me to lay low, blend in, grow my hair out, wear dresses, suicide my sexuality. Which I already tried and failed, so here we are —everything, chaos, inside and around me. I can’t trust myself enough to trust, even when I let those crush fluids seep to my bloodstream by pussy, as if I haven’t already resigned to the dangers of love outside the norm. I say I want my people free. Some do it by the fist, the march, the silence, the analysis, the numbers, the people the people the people —at the end of my day, it is not just what I fight for, it is about why I love.

Flashes; Mine

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in october

breath shatters silence

morning fog envelops my body

parched leaves on my skin open their mouths to

a cloud of dew.

light

from small window swings low

talking through a dream.

skin imprints

a voice

tells me how to move

memories scratch at my brain

little rats.

empty hollow in my stomach grows

growls

limbs replay learned helplessness

waiting for survival in surrender

i am twenty five twenty

sixteen

traveling down the river of time

in the boat of my bed

sleeves full of tears.

sweet tears

run down my open palm

soothe the beast

till i start kissing away wetness off my hands

in october

i hold smallness of a lone embrace

learn to waltz

down this hill i climbed in awakening

every morning i dance

December 2020

Title Needed

she asks me 

“are you lonely?”

and there you are, unbidden

the proud ridge of your nose

your strong brow

it’s almost like you never left

how could you be gone

when the cadence of your speech

with its silences + slow breathiness

is just beneath the surface

of each fleeting thought

but almost doesn’t count

when it comes to cleanliness

or companionship

i wash dishes you never touched

after eating meals I never made for you

there is an empty space to my left

where you should be 

sitting in my kitchen

rubbing grapeseed oil

into my cutting boards

which were hewn by hand

your long, narrow palms

and intelligent fingertips

should be Glistening 

beneath this waxing moon

Jamila croons 

“i’m not lonely, i’m alone”

and here I am, inhaling

the particular perfume of this Longing

at the base of my own throat

even now

with its splintered handle

and ruined riveting

your fragrance clings

to the blade of my heart

Soul to Sole: On Foot Worship, Disability, & Desire

“Kink / bdsm can be a corrective emotional experience. When we give our body & nervous system a new experience, or an experience with a different ending than before, we heal.” -Andrea Glik, LMSW, @somaticwitch 

I. 

“Pour water into a Dixie cup. Place the Dixie cup into the freezer. Once frozen, tear the paper around the top layer of the cup so that a bit of ice is exposed. Place the ice onto the arch of your foot. Go along the fascia in a circular motion for 20 minutes. 

Take the night sock and pull your feet up into a flexed position. Sleep this way. Wrap or tape your foot in the morning. Repeat.” 

Repeat until the nights blend into one another. Repeat until a new Doctor offers the shots that don’t make things any better. Repeat until you keep repeating until you keep…  

“Let us know if you lose any feeling.”

Touch became complicated after the Doctors, the physical therapists, the X-ray techs, and the many hands of well-intended prayer groups. More often than not, these touches made my body feel like a problem to be solved. Since my teenage years, I’d dealt with worn out tendons, micro-tears, and then it was on to degenerating discs, pinched back nerves, and the clusterfuck of Doctor’s visits. 

My feet knew the small shock of electric needles needed to test for nerve damage. They could anticipate the cold, squishy plastic of medical gloves, the poking of fingers onto tender places, just before a quizzical, “Does that hurt?” They swelled and bruised after my body rejected the cortisol shot. The sting lasted for weeks, running hot when the Doctor said a smaller dose would have been more helpful. Each step throbbed when I was asked to walk up to the altar to receive a prayer for healing. No one caught the irony. And on. And on. 

Slowly, over time, my consciousness disengaged. It was enough effort to make sure that the pain was managed and to try to keep up with the costs of orthopedic shoes. Plus, there was potential for the pain to dull – still there – but expressing itself in low thrums if I played things safe. Wasn’t that “enough”?

II. 

The first time I saw my feet with any erotic intent was when an out-of-town lover began to worship them. A conversation about my bright-orange pedicure turned into a few soft and consensual caresses. 

“Can I take you to the bedroom?”
“I live in a studio! Technically, we’re already there.”

I laid on the bed. He lifted my aching heels in the palm of his hands and the blood rushed into them quickly… too quickly for my body to register the sensation. I drew my breath in sharply and closed my eyes. 

“Too much? Am I hurting you?”
“No. I’m just… Go slow…”

He placed his lips close to my right heel, lingering there, building sensation with the warmth of his mouth before kissing me. Then, he moved towards the arch and did the same. We stayed in this space as time stretched around us and when he placed his mouth around the bright-orange pedicure paint, my legs tingled and shook with orgasmic expression. 

III. 

“Turn over, babe.” 

She helped me roll onto my back and I traced the squiggly red lines that the heating pad had left on my stomach. I focused on breathing, raising my hips on an inhale as she slid the pillow under me, making sure that it cradled my tailbone. I extended my thighs into a butterfly, exhaling into the sensation of warmth from her mouth kissing my inner thigh. Her hips moved along rhythmically down by my feet as her tongue continued its inward movement. I noticed the softness of her cotton underwear, feeling it with the side of my foot, angling to touch her as her hips rolled down. 

Sometimes, I notice the ways my toes curl during orgasm. I fear that they will go into spasm, staying curled and painfully contracted. And if the temperature in the room drops, then it’s a possibility that… 

An audible breath brings me back into the moment. But this time, it wasn’t mine. I felt the warmth of her against the side of my foot and softly pressed upward until…

III.

My experiences of sex, disability, and chronic pain have been a journey of reclamation – bringing my overwhelmed, stressed-out body back to erotic sensation. It has meant giving up on one, concrete definition of sex. It’s learning to surrender to an entire spectrum of actions and erotic responses. Sometimes, this happens with a partner but many times it happens alone. Most likely, it’s after I’ve soaked in Epsom salt and recovered the small bottle of rosemary oil. Lubricating my feet with it and breathing deeply into the archways. It’s a certain kind of magic-making: asking the elements of salt, rosemary oil, heat, and breath to collaborate. 

It typically starts as a way to decrease pain or an attempt to bring some flexibility into the area. That is, until I see the Hitachi wand. I turn it into its lowest setting, rubbing the oil deeper into my foot, and breathe. And I think of all of the “new endings” I want to give my feet. I think about ways to seduce them, build their trust in my own loving touches. Sometimes, I prefer the sensation of my own hands to the wand so that I can knead red circles of warmth into my flesh. Sometimes, my girlfriend hears me moaning. Sometimes, this is how I practice healing. 

Dating Someone With PTSD, Depression, and Anxiety: A Beginner’s Guide

So…..

You wanna date someone with a laundry list of mental illnesses,

Or at least you don’t know you do yet.

It’s the first date, or you two just met and the reality is,

You’re in for some shit you probably never planned on.

So you wanna date someone who sometimes feels the grip of their attackers in your hugs,

Tastes the sting of victim blaming on your lips,

Feels knives burn into their insides as your move inside,

Feels the weight of a galaxy on their chest when you’re on top of them and then can’t stop feeling it after you got off.

You unknowingly but willingly play Russian Roulette with a Trauma Survivor who happens to like kink,

and watch the insides pop out like a jack in the box when the move y’all been doing for the past week has a bullet attached to it, 

a sign that they’ve been triggered.

Things you’re gonna need to know:

One.

Saying we aren’t thinking clearly is fucking redundant.         

We know we’re not in the right state of mind, 

and chances are we’ve known for a while,  

Think about how easy it is to see out a car with a broken windshield in the middle of the winter while the defrost setting is broken. 

Think about what it looks like to know that there will never be a day you can call in depressed, call in traumatized, 

call in can’t call in because fingers won’t stop shaking and you don’t know why,

Can’t call in too weak to move cause foods so far away and so close at the same time,

Can’t call in spoonless, helpless, hopeless

Call in every time I close my eyes I still see their face and hear their voice.

We are not strangers to misery, we are the landlords of it, and it is never short on rent.

Two. 

We value the little things a lot,

Little Sleep, 

Little Food, 

Little Water, 

Little Time Alone With Our Thoughts Because Thoughts Are Scary,

Little Time To Breathe, Little Room To Breathe, Little Desire To Breath,

Little Things We Can No Longer Do Because They Remind Us Of Not So Little Things,

Little Aggressions In The Form Of Little Letters Arranged Into Little Words On Little Pieces Of Paper Resulting In No So Little Of A Problem Because People With Little Minds and Little Hearts Have A Not So Little Amount Of Money And Want All The Space For Themselves,

Little, Like The Amount Of Time We Sometimes Feel We Have Left…

But We Also Like Little Kisses On Cheek,

Little Moments Where Showers Feel Like Meditation, 

Little Hugs From Behind To Show How Love Us And Make Us Feel Little In Your Not So Little Comfort,

Little Thoughts About Doing Some Little Freaky Stuff With Some Not So Little Volume And Passion,

Little Finger Wrapped In Little Finger To Make Not So Little A Promise, 

Little Increases In Heartbeat When We Think Of You,

Ya Know, The Little Things.

Know That We Have Little Knowledge Of Which Will Come Next, And That Sometimes They Will Come At The Same Time And MaKe Not So Little Shit Happen. 

So, Just Giving Ya That Little Heads Up.

Three. We are not your patient, so don’t treat us like one.

Meaning we’re not against help, but that’s not always the reason you’re here. 

Yes, we’re here for you being here when we can’t get out of bed to eat and help us with food.

But we’re also here for going out to brunch on a Saturday Morning hungover and going to the bar that night to do it again the next morning.

We’re here for you being here when a kiss is a nuclear warhead, but we’re also here for when it’s a full body orgasm and cuddle session afterwards.

We’re here for when you’re here for when we don’t wanna be here, 

But we’re also here for when here is the only place we wanna be so, 

Know that you’re not on the clock, cause nine times outta ten we can’t pay you with anything other than love and gratitude,

And then bank isn’t always open or full, 

But the thought’s always there.

We’re here for when you’re here for all of these things that are not so good, but we’re here for the moments when things are so wonderful we can’t help but smile rainbows and robot unicorns.

So you, you wanna date someone with a laundry list of mental illnesses, here’s one last thing I’ll say in advice:

If you wanna date someone like me, someone like us, maybe even someone like you….

It’s always a good idea to have this guide with you, but it won’t help on its own.

Because the only way to know our story, is to read it, from beginning to end.