On being a book.

I feel it when you touch me, hold me, run me through your hands. When your eyes are on me, I know. I catch your gaze, swaying back and forth, enthralled, convoluted, stunned. I hear it when you speak. I wait. Mostly, I wait. I wait until the day that you pull me off the shelf and treat me like a lover, holding me close to your body, secreting me away from the stare of others. I am sensuality. A secret individual sensuality that only we know. I am you. I am you as you think you should be, and you aspire to be, as you will never attain. I am the sun and the stars and the moon and the sky. But, above all, I am paper.

I screamed when you tore me.

I am pornography and voyeurism and masochism and sadism. I am a lover, your lover, your most intimate being. I am your secrets, the deepest darkest ones, and the stories you refuse to speak. I am rare and tactile like a precious gem.

I am a number. A collection of numbers. And words. And collections of words. I am life.

I like it rough, I like it soft. I am a prostitute, a dirty whore that can count her worth in dollars.

I am several people at a time. I am work and time and energy and fruition. I am a team, an aglomorate, an abstract coming together of intention, thought and execution. Tossed from one to the next to the next. And then, I am a being. A full being. I tactile being. Your touch came into existence then. Your gaze saw me for the first time. Your heart was open, then. Your body, warm.

I am alone, living a solitary existence. Hope keeps me alive. Dreams keep me alive. Your touch, I long for your touch.

There was a time when all you thought of was me. When you were consumed by the thought of me. When the mere thought of me excited you. When obsession wasn’t a concern. There was a time when you touched me like I was the only one that mattered. Night after night, day after day, dawn after dawn, you slaved to make me whole. You toiled to fulfill my every desire. You were an attentive lover, one that considered me fully, as I should be considered. One that caressed me in the right places. One that made joy and happiness and pleasure a single experience. A duplicitous experience. And one of duplicity.

You molded me with your dexterous hands, crafting me into existence. You were my lifeblood and my sincerest companion. My true and only lover. You were my destiny and I was yours. “I am my lover’s and my lover is mine.”

You used to touch me. You used to hold me. You used to be my lover.

I can still think back to the way your lip crinkled when you saw me naked, bare. When you would spend hours at a time running your hands over my body. The pleasure on your face, I saw it all. You tried to hide it, in vain.

I knew your hopes and your dreams and your aspirations and your desires. I knew these things. I shaped these things. I told you what to think. My own body, a testament to the very oneness of your being. I was an attentive lover.

I am sexuality. The most vivid sexuality. The most raucous, guttural sexuality. I am your desires, your fetishes, the things you choose to silence. I am the personification of these silences, the sick and dirty reminder of your inner-most secretive sexualized fantasies.

And there it is. The crux of things. The crossroads and the beginning of the end. It was you that needed to get away. You that couldn’t handle the intensity. You that put on airs of forgetfulness and neglect. Your touch went away that day. Sensuality denied. Sexuality squandered. Pleasure never to be felt again.

I am expendable. I am pulp.

We are all expendable. We are all books.