bodytruth – by Orlando Silver
ISLAND | ONLINE ONLY
i)
My therapist says, why not try finding ordinary love // less like an avalanche
I want to say, why not try shutting the fuck up // but instead I say, yes, I guess love can be that way but where’s the power in that, the majesty, the learning // where’s the bonfire of wonderment // where’s the story of carnage and release and healing
I know everything about love leads to loss // but it’s the price I paid
Even though // I knew // I would never recover from you
ii)
That liminal time between Christmas and New Year’s. We are three months into our Great Love so you fly me home to meet your parents.
I am twelve years older than you but they take it with grace, because they look at you and they look at me, and love is channelling down from the heavens and breaking apart every syllable of our names and who can compete with that? At least it feels this way. We ignore all repercussions.
I am aware of your every movement. The way your hands shape air. The muscles in your neck as you turn towards me. I guard your sleep, listening to the soft hush of your exhalation. I am greedy for dreams I cannot occupy.
Ordinary things happen. We sleep in your mother’s study. There are two dogs. I listen to you speaking your first language with your family, like an orchestra. There are traditional lunches you make with deft hands. The potato salad. I remember the fish your father presented with pride. There is always an egg, somewhere. Your mother washes my clothes unasked and leaves my folded boxer shorts on the bed.
Other things: New Year’s Eve with you and your friend, the hollow shell of the beach, the darkness, too much dinner. A seductive contentedness. I take you to bed but push you too hard and ask too much, and I feel the bruise of fury towards myself over it for years.
I worked to bring you joy, cupping the starlight as best I could, filtering through comets to find you just the thing you wanted.
I can say with honesty I did this.
iii)
Both of us are still read as women, even now. Both of us born into tiny pink clothes and called female. By the time we meet each other we are already somewhere else. Transgender. Between us we know that ‘trans’ stands for transgression, for transmutation, for translucent. We have no interest in staying fixed for anyone.
It is the catalyst for all things, that love. Our bodies explore all of our genders as we fuck. We steal as much as we can from cisgender gay men, and regret nothing. I call you boy, you call me Daddy. It fits and we adore it.
I start testosterone and it feels so good. I start thinking I am a man. But I can’t sit still. I love the maleness of me, I know: but I uncover myself as some kind of genderqueer derivative. A different perversion altogether. It thrills you, to your core.
I sketch every line of you with my fingers. I devote myself. I make every cell of you thrum with pleasure. I spend hours on it.
You surrender the way a river might, in flow, the movement of you beautiful and pure. You let me love you.
I try to catch you in my hands and that’s where the problem starts. You cannot be caught. The river moves. There is no pause. You come close, then you go, then come close again. The ebb and flow dislocates my heart.
From this place, standing at the riverbank, I realise: you were always meant to leave me.
iv)
I take you to bed, that time. I make you bite my shoulder, hard. I want proof of you. I make you fuck me in that way I always want but never ask for, that relentless edge of too much pain. You take to the task with full intention, never flagging. Your fist pushing deep.
The disconnect between us is painful electricity. You are angry. I am sad. I am losing you by degrees and we know it. I put you on your back and grab your collar, like I used to. I wrench the black leather hard. You say the safe word.
‘Yellow,’ you say, gasping a little. ‘Wait, Daddy. Yellow.’
I pause. I feel the pause. I feel the power in holding still. In making you. I can admit this. That there was five seconds of trying to hold what was no longer mine.
v)
It’s Tuesday, the prearranged time. A restaurant neither of us knows.
I untuck your collar from your knitted jumper, smooth your shirt. You say you can’t stay, and I nod, but I order enough food that we could share, if you changed your mind.
It was always this way with you. Allow the possibility, turn slightly away, and you might come closer if you wished. Depending on how hungry you were.
You have a new tattoo, a picture from a book we know. It’s beautiful and I want to kiss you there, where the skin is still tender, but I don’t.
We have things in bags. You give me back my books, a shirt, things I don’t remember owning. I don’t know what I give you. The novel you didn’t finish reading. Clothes, maybe.
The ending of things is remarkably simple. There is a full stop. There is a scission.
Before. Then after.
vi)
I’m writing the end // the shh shh shh sounds of tide arriving // around us shadows grow like
stories // like ribbons unfolding // the strong heat of the summer’s day still holding to our bodies // like a fading weapon
I’m in those first few golden months of genderfuckery and abiding care // where you would say you loved me as a subtext to every statement // we think we are God
The new moon a little crown upon your head // I can’t stop staring // you are holding my hand // there is wet sand between our palms // the ocean kissing our feet
You turn your face to me // you open my heart with neat incisions // the stitches of all my wounds ripped cleanly, quickly open
You laugh // and say // you love me
We think we are God
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Image: Inge Poelman - Unsplash
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