Malady #5

The room by RadicalP

She opens her eyes, says:

stop lying.

She says she hopes she'll never know anything,

anything the way you do.

She says: I don't want to know

anything the way you do,

with that death-derived certainty,

that hopeless monotony,

the same every day of your life,

every night, and that deadly

routine of lovelessness.

All you remember of the whole affair

are certain words she said in her sleep,

the ones that tell you what's wrong with you:

the malady of death.

Soon you give up, don't look for her anymore,

either in the town or at night or in the daytime.

Even so you have managed to live that love

in the only way possible for you.

Losing it before it happened.

Malady #4

1000 by LittleSilverBones

You say: you must be very beautiful.

She says: I'm here right in front of you.

Look for yourself.

You say: I can't see anything.

She says: Try. It's all part of the bargain.

You take hold of the body and

look at its different areas.

You turn it round, keep turning it round.

Look at it, keep looking at it.

Then you give up.

Give up. Stop touching it.

You go on talking, all alone in the world,

just as you wish.

You say love has always struck you

as out of place, you've never understood,

you've always avoided loving, 

always wanted to be free not to.

You say you're lost.

But that you don't know

what you're lost to.

Or in.

Malady #3

.. by EmilyaManole

Night after night you enter the dark of her sex,

almost unwittingly take that blind way.

Sometimes you stay there; 

sleep there, inside her,

all night long,

so as to be ready if ever,

through some involuntary movement on her part

or yours,

you should feel like taking her again,

filling her again, 

taking pleasure in her again.

But only with a pleasure,

as always, blinded by tears.

She'd always be ready,

willing or no.

That's just what you'll never know.

She's more mysterious than any other

external thing you've ever known.

Nor will you, or anyone else,

ever know how she sees,

how she thinks,

either of the world or of you,

of your body or your mind,

or of the malady she says

you suffer from.

She doesn't know herself.

She couldn't tell you.

You couldn't find out anything about it from her.

Malady #2

Schizophrenia by GrandeObre

One evening you do it,

as arranged, 

you sleep with your face between her parted legs,

up against her sex,

already in the moistness of her body,

where she opens.

She offers no resistance.

She opens her eyes and says:

what joy.

You put your hand over her mouth

to silence her.

Tell her one doesn't say such things.

She shuts her eyes.

Says she won't say it again.

She asks if they talk about it.

You say no.

She asks what they do talk about.

You say they talk about everything else.

Everything except that.

She laughs and goes back to sleep.

Malady #1

Living with ghosts by GrandeObre

You say she must not speak,

like the women of her ancestors,

must yield completely to you

and to your will,

be entirely submissive like peasant women

in the barns after the harvest 

when they're exhausted

and let the men come to them

while they're asleep.

Then one night she does. She speaks.

She asks if she's managing to make your body less lonely.

You say you can't really understand the word

as applied to you.

That you can't distinguish between 

thinking you're lonely

and actually becoming lonely.