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Bad man kink

Three days later and you are still
a bad man. A bad man but my smell
is on you now like ash on the exhale
of the world burning.

I’m bad at sleeping with you—expelling
you from my bed at 2AM, I lock the door
behind you before your uber even arrives—
let you blind your way down my path
in the dark.

I think it’s probably good for you
to be put out like this, an animal
into the night, and it’s good
for me too—I need the sleep, but

I don’t sleep well—I dream of a smiling man
with a bomb strapped to his chest
arriving at my work. I wake
and the fear is working my heart
so hard it almost feels like desire.

The next time
I see you, I’m protesting
outside of parliament and you walk past
with your swipe card, a new tattoo
under your shirt sleeve.

You pretend you’re protesting too

but you have little interest in women’s
reproductive rights. And even less
knowledge of body politics.

Three months and your spell
is still on me, you say, a little afraid
because I like to play
the witch. You buy me

lunch, and I bring my placard
with me. CAN’T TOUCH THIS, it
declares in rainbow lettering,
and I can tell you’re
worried you’ll be seen
by someone who matters.

There is a kink for cis het
white men, but I don’t think I have it.

The first time you cooked for me
you described the meal by its ingredients
and I could tell they were
expensive.

But you don’t have the knack—
what I call the easy hand—
no matter how much you’d like to think
of yourself as a renaissance man.

Later, I lie in your bathtub
eating an apricot, lush flesh lifting
easily from the toxic core, as
you exalt your marble tiles

and I imagine holding you down
face-first in the water
between my legs.