To A Lover

"To know life is given only to that derisory, reductive, and already infernal knowledge that only wishes it dead. The Gaze that envelops, caresses, details, atomizes the most individual flesh and enumerates its secret bites is that fixed, attentive, rather dilated gaze which, from the height of death, has already condemned life." Foucault in The Birth of the Clinic

Lying down before me, your body spreads beneath my gaze. I start at your feet, the less obvivoius place to begin such an inventory. The rough callous bottoms of short, hairy toes. The chipped nails, the one nail too long, the discoloring that comes from age. The veins rise up beneath your skin, pushing like worms through rain drenched soil. They form rivers and tributaires that divide that thin flesh into islands. The corase black hair of your legs begins to grow about the slightly protuding bump of your ankle. I part the hair to reveal hidden scars. Long, white, uneven stories of the past. Up to your knee, that rounded bump, smooth when your leg is flat. Now it's raised to cover the vulnerable softness behind. Your thighs are smooth, and strong with the muscles taut, and defined. They rise up in the front to the side making a small valley between outer and inner. And then my eye searches out that part we are told to keep secret. Right now, under my gaze, your dick is hard, standing erect from the bed of soft hair on your crotch. Your balls hang down, nestled against the start of your ass. You are curcumised, lost the protection of that extra layer of skin at an early age. The thigh creases where it joins the hip, and at the hip once can once again see bone. You are thin so the hipbone juts out, dangerous edges. Your stomach is taut, and moves slightly as you lay beneath me. The muscles are not so well-defined here but I can still make the ridges they form to the sides. Your chest is smooth with only a slight covering of hair between your breasts. Your nipples are hard nuts set in a brown pool. Your hands, lying loosely, at your side are spread out. They are long and big with even longer fingers. Your nails are short, cut, and clean. There is a bit of hair on the top of each hand. Your arms seem too long for you body, even for such a long body as yours. They are slender with the muscles defined delicately from the wrist to the shoulder. Your shoulders with that lovely cup of a clavicle entrall me but only for a moment. I must not lean down to sip from that depth. No, I must continue my inventory. Up the eyes go, sweeping over your neck, where the pulse beats so heavy it moves the skin.

Your face. The doorway to the soul they say. I say "Why the face?" Why not the lower body? Why not that clavicle? Why not the tiny bump of your wrist? But still your face is beautiful. The cheekbones, wide and flat, cup a strong nose. Your mouth with its thick lips, opened ever so slightly so that I can your teeth. Normal teeth, all staright, ready to bite. Your eyes are blackness so dark that there is no bottom. They slant ever so slightly to the sides. Above thick brows all rising to a forehead that is almost too big but not quite. Your hair is black but not silk....it's too heavy, to thick for silk.

My inventory is done. I have mapped this body as one would map a land. I have traced its bounardies with my surveying Eye. I want to claim it as my own. If I am the author of this map, who can take it from me? But sometimes, after we've fucked, I wish I could crawl inside. There is beanth that skin a secret world. I can hear it sometimes when I lie my head against his heart. But sometimes it does not feel like enough.

This kind of knowing kills.