To Be Loved in Touch Alone
If ever you meet someone who knows only how to love in touch, spare them a kiss like loose change. Ever the fool’s gold, a touch is the most worthless currency. Performative tenderness can never dissolve the violence under the skin.
Always, with their chapped lips and open mouth, they’ll beg, sputtering and desperate on their knees, “Spare me a kiss, even a diminishing one, even a greedy one. I’ll take anything, especially a fantasy, especially a lie. Touch me to deliver me from my flesh. Cast me in the role of someone who is loved.” They offer you their body for free, missing nothing but a heart. When you touch the offered flesh, you will become a dream; everything in their orbit turns into fantasy. It is a better bet for them to put their flesh on the line for a gratifying lie or two than to wrench the hurt heart out.
Sometimes their eyes, those soiled windows to some searching soul, will plead a secret favour. They insinuate, “Prove me wrong and love me. I want a saviour and I don’t want it to be me. All I’ve ever dared to desire is fantasy, and to be touched at all is more than I deserve. No one’s ever really loved me - not even myself - I’ve reduced me to flesh too.” A single teardrop, worth little more than a kiss, will fall from their eye. If you have already touched them, it is better to walk away, just as everyone else does. You cannot save them and they cannot love you.
All alone again, their battered heart will finally peer out of its hiding place. It whispers, “I am so tired. Fantasies only hold magic for so long and the clock has struck midnight on delusion. Alone, there are no more lying touches, I breathe easier for it. Maybe one day I’ll be good enough to be loved, loved enough to be good. Today, I am still filthy from the clinging grime of lies on my skin, and I tuck my wounds into bed alone. Today I am still unloved, and I am more tired than I was yesterday.”
To which the body invariably replies: “Fret not, I know what will help. I must try to be touched again tomorrow.”
10/08/20
