Whelm
Anuarite Gikonyo
by Anuarite Gikonyo
Whelm / 12:35 am.
I find you already in bed with nothing on. You sit with your stomach to the sheets, asshole to the door. I peak at it (when I get the chance. It’s exposed with a slight separation of your legs, rather than tucked behind your tailbone; Mostly an open secret like this). You’re reading Anaïs Nin, something erotic. I wonder if it touches you through your mind.
Most times, when I look at your bare body, I can appreciate it for what it is. (A beautiful form. Delightful curvatures where the body should round, as well as striking lines that surprise in their visibility. The gulley of your back, collarbone and shoulders are such cases.) Today, however, if you cannot already tell by my words, is not such a day. I want you.
Your body becomes a challenge to my gaze, and I am not content with looking. I want to be feeling you with my fingertips, showing my lust to you like this. I forget that I know your skin so I can get a feel for it again. (Last time’s not recent enough for recollection.) I want to be overcome by you. I am being overcome by you and want itself.
If it was not evident from my words thus far, “ration” is of little interest. Yet as you fall asleep beside me, as though mockingly, Descartes is who is awake for my perusal. I look at the pages of The Rationalist, but don’t know what or why I’m reading. I’m not looking for this type of sense.
I feel sensitive then. Wishful and stupidly positioned. Ready to fantasize over that which is real and obvious: I see. You are asleep and my touch, as charged as it comes, is unsolicited.
I swallow myself. I’m reluctantly telling the lights it’s time for bed. The filament’s still hot to the touch, whatever the bulb may say.
Anuarite Gikonyo is a student of dance and linguistics at Bennington College. Her piece "A God of Feel and Listen" was featured in the first issue of r0ver magazine in 2022.