Hollow: A Bedtime Story
Part I:
I like the way a stranger's hand feels on scarred skin
That belongs to
Me
He
Doesn't have a name
That I know of
But his personality unfolds with each thrust
In
My head he loves me
And not just because I cling to him
With desperation
Love me
Is synonymous with
Fuck me
And he loves rough
So I come
When he calls
A name that isn't mine
Or is it
I lose myself when I find him
Hiding behind a loneliness
That mirrors my own
Realizations
That frighten me more than the oblivious
"Are you okay?"
I don't trust my voice
My concerns are insignificant
As he pushes himself harder
Into a place
He should run from
My psyche
Or what's left of my
Mind
Body
Soul
Searching for an entity
Willing to become one
And with bleak irony he pulls out
And releases
Our temporary unity
So I finish myself off
And he calls a cab
While I call my mom
And soon she's home
With a tired smile
And sleepy eyes
That look around
Not quite knowing
That
Ignorance isn't bliss
But apathy
Part II:
This stranger
Smells like regret
Even before we anonymously touch
Intimately
He fucks like we're in love
But he's just imagining
I'm someone else
Who likes when he caresses
Their back when they kiss
Passionately he moans a name
That is mine
But sounds foreign
And familiar at the same time
Paradox realities
Where he cares about me
Exist
While I sleep off the sex
That sticks to my body
Like damp clothes
On a muggy mid-morning
Night falls
And he's been gone for hours
But that scent still lingers
Regret
I don't regret you as much as I should
Part III:
It's a girl this time
And she opens her legs almost
Instantly
I know she's been looking for love
In the form of an orgasm
She can't get
From the male anatomy
The monotony has her searching
For something different
Like an emotionally damaged being
Who lives to
Serve
My purpose
Becomes clear
And I let her cry
On my fully clothed stomach
After she groaned into a climax
Tinged with the empty satisfaction
That is both short lived
And never ending
Part IV:
He asked if I consider myself
A slut
And here it is
Hours later
And I'm still lying naked
With cold sweat covering
A hollow body
And
A question that doesn't need an answer
But has one anyway
Part V:
My hands explore
My body
And it's different
Although not entirely new
Old memories
Of a harmless curiosity
Seem foreign
Among this focused intent
I am alone tonight
But there is no difference
Because
The warm bodies always leave me feeling
Frozen
Summer fades
And my days are no longer free
But the night air is infinite
And for a few seconds I actually feel
Like living
A while longer
-Tye Rhine
aureate
If a man is only as good as his word,
then I want to marry a man with a vocabulary like yours.
The way you say "dicey" and "delectable" and "octogenerian"
in the same sentence-- that really turns me on.
The way you describe the oranges in your backyard with
"anarchistic" and "intimate" in the same breath.
I want to follow the legato and staccato of your tongue,
wrap it around your diction
until listening became more like dreaming
and dreaming became more like
kissing you.
I want to jump off the cliff of your mind,
into the suicide of your stream of consciousness.
I want to visit the place in your heart where the wrong words die.
I want to map it out with a dictionary and points
made of bright light
until it started looking more like a star chart
than a method for communication.
I want to memorize the scripts of your seductions,
I want to live in the long-winded epics of your disappointments,
in the haikus of your epiphanies.
I want to know all the names you've given your desires,
and I want to find my name among them,
because there is nothing more wreckingly sexy than the right word.
I want to thank whoever told you there was no such thing
as a synonym,
I want to throw a party for the heartbreak
that made you a poet.
And if it's true that a man is only as good as his word,
then, please, let me be there the first time
you become speechless,
and all your explosive wisdom
becomes a burning ball of sun in your gut
and all you can bring yourself
to utter is "oh god, oh god."
-Laura Tormos
At the time, there wasn't a word for the hands where hands shouldn't have been
Trespassing mouth unannounced
You took advantage of the dark.
I kicked hard and that was it except it wasn't.
I told no one.
Time didn't exist but within a minute you broke something I never knew was meant to be
whole.
I've tried to fix it
and failed to fix it
Because playing with knives doesn't heal scars.
I've tried to trust the masculine mind but can't
A touch is an intrusion, not affection
I flinch by reflex,
Don't let him hurt you.
Gay by proxy,
It took a girl to make my skin feel beautiful
For hands on my waist to feel like an embrace and not a threat.
You're the reason I can't kiss boys without planning an escape route.
Why I can’t meet boyfriends without seeing straight to the parts of him that will
fuck. her. over.
Thirteen is too young to stop believing.
I’ve only spoken about this to explain why I’m never interested.
So wherever you are now,
I’m not interested.
-Anon