So what will the world drag into daylight now?
Imran Boe Khan

There’s a face behind the love we make,
unrolled film, untrusting mouths pressed to algorithms.
A moment double exposed. At the business end,
I feel the clutch of your pity
squeezing, your thirst alighting
as the shame bruises your gaze. What do you notice
for your guilt to riot? The taste of his sweat
on my neck? The weight of his tongue in my mouth?
How have I inherited the qualities of your shame?
The brain, with its little portals, opens
into discord, pulls his cock inside this thin sheet of latex.
We keep him puckered through our sickness,
a torture plugged consistent.
You tell me it’s not that you hated me,
you just fucked him for the affirmations,
the words he offered to soothe what bled,
whilst his pig thirst drank you
into something you hated. Everyone loves an ego trip
but yours raked men across our bedsheets
and suddenly we are so old,
still pulling the harm from our heads
and piecing together a past we press into floor boards,
as if we could sneak away
from the years made cold on your skin.

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