# Lust I don't know what it is—this hunger that arrives unbidden, a thief slipping through the window of wanting. It wears a thousand faces, each one familiar, each one a stranger. Sometimes it whispers like silk, sometimes it roars like the sea against the rocks of my ribs. I've called it love, called it need, called it the only truth I know. But it's simpler than that— and far more terrible. It's the body's prayer, the soul's betrayal. It's the moment before falling, the vertigo of being alive. I don't apologize for it anymore. This flame that consumes reason, this darkness that feels like light— it's as much me as breath, as necessary as blood. Let it be named. Let it be felt. Let it be what it is: the raw, unadorned edge where we meet ourselves and find we are ravenous.

 
My body weeps and cries out
for the man I love,
In my bedroom, alone,
I stifle my hunger,
my vulva begins to sing.


When you touch me I tremble,
a shudder travels into my depths,
then desire sets my belly moving
and in one long glissando, the sirens rise,
my body screams for you in pink nights.


My body begs to be desired,
between groin and belly and buttocks, and I cry out and cry out,
the thin sounds dissolve,
the city hears me through the sliding doors,
the world in which I live without words, it smiles.


I lie naked, mouth open and sex
waiting for you, you pry apart my thighs
I settle into my yielding belly
and I wait, I wait with
my eyes closed and you find my secret flawlessly.


With my opening wet as cardboard,
I bite into the sheets burning with need,
waiting for your thrust and your grinding,
and the rhythmic knocking of your balls
flows away into the heat.