submissive

All day long, I expend.
I hold together, I lift up
I give out.
I pour light for our food supply.
I irrigate crops with my mouth.
It’s a rare occasion
when I just
take in.

So when he asked me if I
was a Dom or a Sub,
I didn’t know what he meant
but I knew I wanted to be the
opposite of him so we could fit.
and just so you know,
I would have settled for kissing his wrist.

(I’m a liberated woman,
My ex-husband could tell you
that you will never find SUBMIT
written on my palms, but they are
always face up and open
ready to give.
According to Cosmo,
Men want you to take control,
So I’ve memorized the erogenous zones,
the placement of my tongue for the
desired response, and I know
how to make a man’s microphone sing songs.
But the hardest thing
in the world for me
is to lay back and receive.)

He held me.
Like the edge of the building holds the feet of the fed up.
The way the sky holds the surrender of a falling body.
He maneuvered me.
Like a canoe in crashing rapids, my hips the stern
his hand the pivoting blade under the water.
He said, relax.
I don’t want you to do anything.
This is a move I don’t know.
The move to nothing.
To be completely open and empty
without effort, to take in pleasure
with no strategy or counter.
He placed my hands over 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 fret board between my legs
and a sound box in my mouth, there were chords
that didn’t exist until he pulled them out.
There were no chains or whips
But I could have called him Master
Not because I felt less than him
But because it was like he knew things
about my body that I didn’t
Like he had been learning it for 1000 years
and he deserved a fucking certificate.
Like I was the prayer mat and the eastern sky
and he was the man who had just conquered
the last inch of mind.
He said, how do you feel?
I said Alive.

So I guess I’m a Sub.
I guess this independent woman likes to be dominated.
But like race, when it comes to sex
there is never a box for the whole truth.
Sexuality and gender are piles
of images and words clipped from magazines
waiting to be glued into place on our vision boards.
And that’s how it should be.
Because the way they were originally assembled
no longer makes sense. We are not definable.
We are prisms of light, shades of feminine
and masculine looking for someone to bounce life off of.
Looking for someone to give when we need to receive,
receive when we need to give and when it’s done right,
both get done at the same time.
Sometimes its rough like bone to bone, lick-your-insides-clean love
Sometimes its candle wax on torsos, feathers on ankles,
moonbeams on eyelashes. Sometimes it is just body to body,
Being to Being, here let me hold that for you, your soul has been
swimming in labels so long, it’s grown tired of survival
here’s a moment of bliss, a moment of aliveness.
All day long I expend. I hold together. I lift up. I give out
I pour light on our food supply. Irrigate crops with my mouth.
And sometimes I just take in.