- Lis d’abord la lettre. Tu l’as toujours, non?
- Oui.
- Alors, lis-la maintenant s’il te plaît.
- Tu veux m’achever ou quoi ? Je t’ai déjà dit que je voulais pas lire de lettre. Je suis là. Tu es là. On est fait de chair et de sang. Arrête d’avoir peur.
- J'ai pas peur, je veux tout ce que tu veux, je veux juste que tu lises la lettre d’abord.
- C’est pour ça qu’on a barricadé la porte ?
- Peut-être. S'il te plaît.
- Je suis pas sûr que tout ça va m’amuser très longtemps. Ça pèse, hein ?
- Assieds-toi là, s’il te plaît.
- « Au contraire, si je t’implore, resserre les cordes s’il te plaît. Ajuste la ceinture d'au moins deux ou trois crans. Plus c’est serré, mieux c’est. Et en plus, enfonce-moi dans la bouche de vieux bas que j’aurai préparés. Enfonce-les si fort que je ne puisse plus émettre le moindre son. Ensuite enlève le bâillon, s’il te plaît, et assieds-toi sur ma figure et donne-moi des coups de poing à l’estomac pour m’obliger à t’enfoncer ma langue dans le derrière. »
- Je peux prendre ça au sérieux ? Tu te moques de moi, c’est ça ?
- « ...car tel est mon veux le plus cher : mains et pieds attachés dans le dos et enfermé à clé près de ma mère et enfin, inaccessible pour elle derrière la porte de ma chambre. Cela- jusqu'au lendemain. Ne te soucie pas de ma mère. C'est mon problème à moi. Emporte toutes les clefs des chambres de l’appartement et n’en laisse aucune ici. »
- Ça va ouvrir quoi pour moi tout ça ? Hein ? Peut-être que tu pourrais ouvrir ta bouche cultivée et dire quelque chose sur cette merde, non ?
- « Si jamais tu me surprends en train de désobéir à tes ordres, alors frappe-moi s’il te plaît. Même avec le dos de la main au visage. Demande-moi pourquoi je ne me plains pas à ma mère ou pourquoi je ne te rends pas tes coups, surtout dis-moi ces choses-là afin que je sente à quel point je suis impuissante. »
/
After all,
How much difference is there
Between two fingers I control
Or a man I don’t know, balls deep?
Everything is consumption.
Throat bruised
Or scratched,
Tears welling,
Out of breath.
The gargle of my gag reflex
Triggered!
Triggered!
Triggered!
I could never do it to myself no matter how hard I tried it just wouldn’t come back up again-
Not sick enough!
A mess crumpled on the floor of the bathroom with salvia dripping from my open mouth-
Not sick enough!
Not sick enough!
Not sick enough!
In fact there was no sick anywhere.
The food rotting in my stomach,
Decomposing in the cavern of my body,
Turning to fat,
Turning to mass,
I could feel it clinging to me
Like the hands of a stranger
Pushing me harder,
Gripping my hair,
On my knees like I’m worshipping
The god in front of me,
Bound to the toilet seat,
My body is of no use to me
So, I guess I’ll let you use me-
Use me!
Use me!
Use me!
Use me!
Use me!
Use me!
/
I turned to hedonism,
Watching other people indulge in what I was too paralysed by hunger and self-loathing to do myself:
Pornography, sexy, mountains of bodies,
Ornamental orgies,
Slick with sweat, gleaming and gluttonous,
Milky white rivers on polished skin,
Men with cocks that swung valiantly,
Women with breasts that rippled like waves,
Men and women, pink alike, all alike, inside.
I touched myself, alone;
I liked the acidic burn in my stomach as jealousy gargled there,
The flush it summoned across my cheeks, my chest, my neck.
I watched plates be filled;
Piles of food, greasy or sweet,
Dripping in sauces that ran down fingers and lips in calorific, orgasmic streams.
My stomach would quiver and my mouth grew wetter and wetter and wetter...
Hours would pass, in abstinence,
The rumbles would quieten- I’m quite full, thank you.
There always came a moment when the desperate hunger collapsed into nausea,
Disgusted,
Repelled,
Hollow, but relieved to be.
/
There’s a fine line between desire and disgust,
Walking the tightrope, worship or lust.
My prayers are unanswered
And my body is worthless,
Nothing is sacred,
Everything is god.
I wake in a bed, unmade,
In last night’s clothes or naked and cold,
Delirious on a long night of thoughts that just won’t stop-
My sleep is always restless unless I’m drunk.
I’ve been tempted by glass bottles and empty stomachs lately,
Bitten by the serpent,
An addict to control- or the loss of it.
Life is a circle,
No, a spiral,
And I’m floating in the middle of it.
I’m too good,
Scared of breaking the rules,
Even when I was starving I didn’t die,
Didn’t even come close,
Couldn’t throw up when my finger was scraping the back of my throat,
Couldn’t get rid of the fat, not all of it,
Never fainted, or got sent to the doctors...
Only my parents noticed.
I got fucked on my first night here because I felt so lost and alone,
I wanted to be brave,
was that a brave thing to do?
He wasn’t gentle,
Or particularly kind,
And I still spent the rest of the night feeling lonely and homesick, just now with a sore throat.
I think about it sometimes when I’m feeling self-destructive,
How I wanted to be perfect,
How I wanted to be God.
Fear lines my stomach, the acid can’t escape,
It just boils,
And bubbles,
And teeters on the edge of a reflux,
Then settles back down to a simmer,
I pinch the fat
I pinch the fat
I pinch the fat and nothing changes.
I am the same, always.
The thoughts never go away,
I never get better or even any worse,
Just biting my tongue,
And holding my breath,
Quiet, cold,
Unnoticed, alone,
Thinking...
/
There’s nothing provocative about this. Laid out naked, bare. Nothing scandalous about my body. Twisted, sexual, hungry, hollow. Flesh draped, nipples pink. Blue undertones, cold. Nothing new, nothing that hasn’t already been seen. Veins under translucent skin, dimples of fat across my stomach, splatter of moles like paint flicked across canvas. The leathery soles of my feet and the crooked shape of my nail-bitten fingers. Uncensored. Erotic. Disgusting. Blue screens lit up bodies bright fuck hard. Shock value is passé, forgotten. Desensitised sterilised clinical white alcohol smell used condoms and pregnancy tests. Fucking on the internet. Nothing provocative nothing scandalous. Dead bodies, brutality, gore. Organs pouring out onto concrete. Children’s bodies, like porcelain dolls, shattered. Sick bodies, starved bodies, raped bodies. Scrolling through bodies like a stroll through a morgue. An age dissected from the corporal. We feel nothing yet know everything, inside out. No hunger, we are stuffed, three bird roast, bodies filled by other bodies, all you can eat, vomit on the toilet seat, go back for more, indifferent. Bodies. Not provoked or provoking. Not scandalised or scandalising. Not shocked or shocking. Just laid out on the table like a vivisection, numb or used to the feeling, under constant inspection yet seen by no one.
/
- T’es fâché contre moi ? J’espère que non. La lettre n’est pas très bien écrite, je sais. Je suis pianiste, pas poète. Et après tout, l’amour repose sur des choses très banales, non ? Mais tu peux réfléchir tranquillement tout seul, t'as mon numéro de téléphone. Je te l’ai déjà dit : je veux tout ce que tu veux. Il y a tout ce qu’il faut. Voila. Mais ça peut aussi attendre demain, n'est-ce pas ? Tu me parles plus ? Je te dégoute, hein ? C'est pas nécessaire. Ce désir de prendre des coups, je l’ai depuis des années. Je t’ai attendu, tu sais. C’est pas une plaisanterie tout ce que je t’ai écrit, tu le sais. Dorénavant, c’est toi qui commandes. Dorénavant, c’est toi qui choisisses ce que je vais mettre. C'est quoi ta couleur préférée ? Tu m’as pas encore dit. Tu me parles plus ? T'es fâché ? Mais dis quelque chose !
- Erika, t’es malade. Il faut te faire soigner.
- Si tu veux me frapper, frappe-moi.
- Je veux pas quand même me salir les mains. Des gens comme toi, on ne touche même avec des gants. Je te jure que je t’ai aimée.
/
Body
Like roadkill
Smashed into gravel,
With my organs smeared
And skin unravelled.
Harvest my parts,
Laid open, I’m a farm
Of fly-infested meat,
Half-digested seed of life-
Wasted,
Can you taste it?
Metallic and sharp,
Bitterness in the tough chew
Of my arteries
Exploding on your tongue-
I regret!
I regret to say
I regret to say I never said what I meant.
I mean,
I lived in self-loathing,
Buried under clothing,
Flesh caressed
With the merciless strength of my death grip,
Clawing at my throat-
Resentment still lingers under my nails,
A voice strangled,
Silenced with the ringing of a shot
Through the skull-
I am one with the cattle,
With the mothers, sucked dry
But not by their young,
With the fathers still supple,
Before their bodies turn stringy,
Get stuck in your teeth,
And the children crying,
Not understanding,
What their parents feel in their bones-
Inescapable,
Inevitable,
Herded to their funeral.
I’m sorry,
I know, this is not what you wanted,
But everyone seems to have forgotten
The thing I cannot forget-
Now I’m healthy again,
It’s like it never even happened.
I laid myself out like a buffet, sexy,
And when you opened your eyes,
Still deep inside,
You realised I’d transformed into a corpse,
Mashed into the mattress, sexy,
And somewhere in the gore,
My mind wandered,
Thinking about materiality,
And how strange it is that our bodies are full
Of throbbing, pulsing, beating things,
Slimy and red and oozing, sexy!
I fell in love and felt his kisses trace their way across the landmine of my body,
Every brush of his lips became a threat,
One misstep…
He tells me I’m beautiful and I squirm away,
He wants me naked so I turn off the light,
Stumbling in the dark along the rocky terrain
And mud slides until...
One click-
The world turns red,
As the skies overflow,
A fatal flood of hot, sticky blood.