Susie Ann | We Are Not in Love Anymore | La Putride Mort
by Ayoola Solarin
cropped illustration is part of the Kiss Touch Smile painting series by Molly Mendoza (@msmollym), image courtesy of the artist
Susie Ann
An ode to Susan Sontag and Annie Leibovitz
Shall we bake on a day that's maybe not September 13th but
just as sticky, with the heat and everything.
Forget the year because it's always going to be 1988,
me pressed up against you balmy sweet
with the window open, and with a lens shoved in your face.
Won't you kiss my belly til I'm fit to bust and I'll capture you
all at once a billion times my girl, my girl all at once a billion lives
I can see your place from mine and the window's ajar there too and
further still two shadows the colour of smoke make it all the way
real quick but also real slow, looking fit to combust the whole time.
We Are Not in Love Anymore
(And I Only, Just This Second, Realised I'm Sad About It)
forgive and forgive
again
Let us be
okay
Leave
your toothbrush
kissing mine
bristles softening
perpetually
the first act
of pliancy
can't we be
understanding
Give me
wet laughs
that break
like a bottle of milk
on a counter corner
spilling, glugging
over and over
leaving
no choice left
but to cry
if we could
take
the wrong turn
past maddening
I think we'd find
warm touches
thumbs
erasing worry lines
kind words, well worn
something enduring
something visceral
a door opening
again
and again
clicking shut
behind us
with a pull.
La Putride Mort
If your fingers have been inside me
plunged too deep
the first time
would I let you touch me, again
hold me
turn my face to you,
slick digits slender
so close to my mouth
I have a fear of being dirty
heady
unruly.
I know my smell,
self made agitation
I have a fear of giving over
craving slick palms
warm breaths
tender things
and volatile ones too
what to do with a sense of sheer panic
you wet your thighs with
simply by looking at tree bark too close
or noticing a penny on the ground and
how your thumb smears off the mud so easy
tasting two splashes of rain
right at the beginning of a downpour
so many ways to be
undone from the outside in
they look at me too long in the street,
I wonder if they can smell me too–
Would I let you touch me
anyway?
Would you touch me again,
knowing?
You think it's hunger
built in to be churned out
that I'm manufacturing lust
at will
simply desire
at work, to crave and not
know shame.
The truth is this:
To want is a shame that I cannot burn out.
But I'll try anyway, with your unwitting help.
about Ayoola (she/her/hers)
Ayoola Solarin is a queer, Black Arts + Culture writer, comics editor and reviewer, based in London. She has written for Dazed, VICE, Hyperallergic, Cause & Effect and gal-dem, among other publications.
Twitter: @AyoSolarin
Instagram: @immortanayo