I can’t feel my face.

Damn, woman: midnight mode has us melting. She’s breaking out in spontaneous shouts of ‘glory, glory’ and ‘ah, fuck me’. Her breasts are bashing into the bedframe. Falling off the bed. Slamming into the armoire. She turns self-discovery into a holy roller pancake breakfast on cocaine. A Victoria’s Secret bra, Damaris silk panties–all that she’s got on. She’s not weak. She wears lingerie like body armour. Her head hits the wall as she jerks, as self-actualization feels like orgasm. Why have I never kissed her? All my life’s loves have been women. That’s something, since I’ve never tasted a single one of their lips. And there’s this woman on my bed asking me to strip, to rub my nipple on the carpet. To stick my head in a pillow case and tell how much I love myself. Exhilaration, every time she makes worlds with those lips. I should kiss them. But I can’t feel my face. North of my eyes, nose, to the nook under my mouth: all numb. Not nerves. Not that I don’t see the beauty. Her lips saved me. Thought myself a non-person. She snarled at the idea, smacked me in the face. Used her lips to draw the lines of my body. Her lips made words and those words had me suddenly soaking sun, having a kiki in the middle of city streets. What’s danger to a ghost? Now could be seen, could be smushed by a semi. Survival became something I did again.

And I know she’ll be the death of me
At least we’ll both be numb
She told me, “Don’t worry about it”
She told me, “Don’t worry no more”
We both know we can’t go without it
She told me you’ll never be alone

I know every skin cell. Her lips adorn her airspace with anticipation, anxiety. Those fleshy bits on her face never fail to be crimson, whatever the hour. Lipstick lacquered on to hide all the bites that self-silence her, tooth slicing, the honesty. I like the blood, wish she didn’t mask it. Those cuts feel like bursts of humanity. She’s an active brain, perpetually unsatisfied. At the top of the hour, every hour she throws an angry fuck at too much naked truth lounging amidst her neurons. Mindspace becomes a vacuum. Loses all its oxygen. Like if breakthroughs were opening a plane door mid-flight.

We both stopped stripping in front of others. You might see me in my boxer-briefs; but I could walk into the streets of Baghdad, bullets richochet right off my heart. Kiss my belly button: it’s military grade. Don’t feel a thing. Her, Me: Our lips don’t say shit. We know no one sees the small scars, bites, scratches of vulnerability poking through. People believe anything you say because they want desperately to believe you’re just as much human as they. She’s got this neurose no one sees through. People always think she’s hungry. See her rapidly munch on the air, lick invisible hummus from her mouth cos napkins are the fucking devil. She says it’s a snack. Satiate the hunger.

Where do we go
When thunder is crashing down?

That hunger, such bullshit. Our first sixty seconds were the last time those lips shaped a lie. Saw it for what it was the first time she shattered Soho sidewalks with her Manolo Blahnik’s. Shins stomped, heels hit the ground with hurricane force to keep her lie holy. She has so much sadness, won’t let it use her brain as its own loudspeaker. She siphons it out, keeps it locked in a stomach prison. Uses her lips to shut the door on it. Sadness can’t be restrained, won’t say yes, ma’am when you whip it with a cat-o’-nine-tails. It escapes, says hello to the world in a sigh. We both have aversions to sighing. I think they’re zygote-emotions. Her sigh, violence. Snacking on the air shoves her shame back down her esophagus, shows self-control who’s boss.

There she was, on a corner
She looked at me, it was getting colder
I told her I don’t have the time
She said “who do you think you are?”
Touch your face, part your lips for me
Let me in, hear my symphony

Told her: Stop it, I see you . There’s really nothing to that sentence. Just that no one ever says it. Said to me: I can’t feel my face. Lips, numb. Can say whatever the fuck I want.

Those lips deserve more than sexual confusion. They’re a master class on being a struggling human. Sit cross-legged on my pillow, watch the muscles in her mouth lay slack, kick it into hyperdrive when they want. Every few seconds her lips cycle: grin, grimace, genuine surprise, world-class O-face. It’s goddamn beautiful. And I don’t kiss those lips cos that’d be a tonedeaf touch of the heart. Respect the fuck out of those lips, of her. There’s other ways, these words, to show this vulnerability–her–means more than any man who thought he saw me. Numbness is our freedom. I, she, can’t feel our faces. In these sheets, that’s our sweetest intimacy. To just be, have someone know.

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