I, A Practitioner of Want

Your hands learned me 

like a language without

punishment. I fit there. 

I was careful and careless in the right

ways. Later, 

the room emptied but the names stayed.

‘A woman with a loud want.’ 

They called me abundance 

like it was a warning. 

‘I was generous with my skin.’ 

I replayed the tenderness 

and somehow mistranslated it 

into guilt. 

As if being wanted required an apology.

Your mouth said nothing cruel, 

but I had already memorized the script.

Nothing about it was rushed, 

except the way the word found me

afterward. 

Slipped onto my body 

like a coat I was told I had earned.

One I did not consent to wear. 

‘A practitioner of want’. 

Clean intimacy gets dirtied

afterward. Nothing went wrong, 

that’s what frightened me. 

The room stayed gentle, 

but my thoughts did not. 

I’m not expecting flowers, 

just to not be renamed afterward.

I’m not expecting flowers… 

only the right to remain

whole. I replayed your care 

and somehow translated it 

into accusation. 

‘Undisciplined desire!’ 

I'm devoted to your touch. 

I wore my pleasure like evidence.

I did not lose myself that night, I

only lost the lie 

that I am smaller 

when I am touched. 

They taught me that desire 

must be rationed 

to remain respectable. 

I exceeded my portion.