Thank you for permitting me to pick up

fallen coins from under your bed or to wipe

stains off the sink and the toilet lid—

I’m obsessive this way—and for pouring

bitter substances down my throat

or directing them through my veins

with assurances and a needle; whatever

it took to take me on vacation from real life.

Thank you for every sex-tape

and for calling all your friends to join in

and for lying that I had to stay

because the party wouldn’t be the same

without me. Thank you for not knowing

that I hooked up with the others

who swam into the net of my body

instead of yours. Thank you for finding out

and inviting me back anyway.

Thank you for paying for everything

from the hotel to the lube to the takeaway

and also, at times, for making me pay.

Thank you for the music: unmemorable songs

on the radio or the calypso of our fucking

tuned to the evening’s shifting key—

from major to minor then something in between.

Thank you for your laptop on which I checked

emails during breaks from foreplay

or clicked on websites where I browsed

for more of others like you on shelves

in an infinite library of desire we return to,

waiting to be retrieved, opened and tirelessly

read and re-read. Thank you for not reading

between the lines of superficial dialogue;

for accepting lies as lies taking the place

of unacceptable truths, or truths too much

to unpack like suitcases heavy with bricks

and broken glass. Thank you for these harmonies

built by lush chords of our mendacity

our interconnected bodies ride on, as if floating. 

Thank you for telling me again

not to overthink or hold myself

back; and to let go—Taoism

in a “69” position. Thank you

for taking it slow, for taking it

all the way, peeling back every

boundary, time breathing

wetly down our necks. Thank you

for broadening my senses of

terms like “slave” and “breed”.

The heart droops in its cave,

while the rest of my body

departs on its singular adventure

without compass or map.

My thanks for not pointing where

this might go, how this will end.

Even if you’ve never known,

bless you for thrusting us farther

around the bend, tilting our faces

away from solitariness and death.

Thank you for the subtle S&M;

the light bondage, the sharp spanks;

for turning on every lamp

under the skin. Thank you for trust

and experimentation; for mild

kinkiness to what-the-fuck-

were-you-thinking? Thank you

for still believing in limitation.

Thank you for submission

and for accepting contradiction:

for understanding “yes” when

I meant “no”. Thank you

for binding us together

to the here and now;

for the art of our amnesia

regarding impermanence

and a purgatorial world outside.

Thank you for the banality of addiction

and the return of regret; a dream I wake up from

remembering nothing; with the knowledge

that if the details rushed back in

I’d delete the numbers from my phone;

I’d toss my little black book down the chute.

Thank you for the lovely suggestion

that our need is but a metaphysical symptom

of a universe that can never kick the habit

of self-perpetuation, itself a consequence

of senselessness rather than intelligent design;

except that what we’ve been perpetuating

is little beyond the body’s unspeakable

reason to forget; a forgetfulness that’s

leaving me this morning, since I’m observing

your messages without reply. Instead

I’m deciding whether to peer out the window

with an untethered mind, re-enter a book,

turn on the television, or write a different poem. 

Thank you for inspiring me with your mouth

between my legs (it’s marvellous how deep

your throat may go) to ask: What exists

before the question of desire? How far

into the rabbit hole of the self must we travel

in order to know? If not the self, then

must we burrow into the soul?

Is it even separate from that limitless

whole? And is the structure of the whole

a bottomless well, full of moans,

a passageway to hell? Then any question

collapses into its own aphasia—

Later your face hovers like the moon.

Your smile rests in its own epistemology.

Before the question, there’s the affirmation

of being; not any descent but an ever-surfacing;

an expansion we misunderstand

and thus inhibit and ruin, falling down openings

we dug with the rusty spades of thought.

Thank you for another distant reminder

after we’ve repressed talk of love

that there’s a place where you’d hear songs

that haven’t been sung, poems

nobody wrote, life-changing sentences

left dangerously unsaid.

Here’s the truth that will never lie

dormant for too long; where the music

of kisses to ecstatic moans

fade then swell to a turbulent symphony;

where our truest faces stab

the compliant surface of memory

then glide back under like sharks.

Look at us, poor victims of society,

all politeness and proper names

in the light. But in that deepest dark,

we’re nowhere we’ve not been

before: a place that exists long after

our bodies meet the floor;

a private universe of invisible

things; a place turning in you and me

we return to like spacemen cartwheeling

through jagged hoops of galaxies

in a boundless space of unremembered dreams.

Thank you for the necessary things;

for keeping us safe and not inviting that guy

who could have been a cop in disguise,

eager to fulfil his entrapment quota;

for standing at the window with a cigarette

poised like a warning on your lip

to scan passers-by beneath your flat;

for taking a walk to the lobby downstairs

at the requisite hour to see if vehicles

were suspiciously parked outside;

for informing me of your health status;

for making sure anyone you asked

to join us would be kind and adaptable;

for keeping our glasses filled with drink;

for asking, midway, if I was hungry

because my stomach made a noise;

for seeing me to the door and only

after checking that I’ve taken every item

that I brought with me into your home,

ensuring I leave nothing of myself behind.

Thank you for the silences

in between or after physical

transactions; smoking

or lying in bed, not touching

or sometimes touching;

for knowing that what we

couldn’t say would be better

left unsaid; every silence filling

with everything we were

never meant to absorb

about our lives; containing

more than just a hint

of mortality; a lesson

in accepting that we’re

ruled by something more

than thought and will;

horizons arising in the distance

of our quietude in which

abjection fades—before

we turn to meet each other

and fall into ordinary time again.

Thank you for the backaches, bruises,

welts, cuts or occasional scar.

Thank you for your disillusionments

and denials of buried hurt; for showing me

how not to be and the hidden pathways

to a better me. Thank you for signs

of affection, effortlessly unreal

or aspects of an unquenchable light. 

My thanks to most of you (unironically

meant) for not returning thanks.

To those who thanked me, my arms

reopen in reply—you’re welcome—

and embrace you in farewell.

As I don’t believe in prayer, I imagine

for us a future in which love

shows up on the final card, or an insight

into the wonderment of solitude

that means we’re reborn—

we’ve come so far. But before that

happens, let me say my thanks one last time;

please keep safe and au revoir.