SURFACES ❋ Gavin Kokichi Lytton

I keep making the same mistake
of confusing good sex with love.

Stone is stone but skin not skin. Smooth
unfinished faces slide off one another onto

bedroom floors. Common are complacent bodies
they come to each other in the night and find rest

in wickedness. You are virtuous, the rest
wicked. This rest divine and the rest

divine to the touch of man. Simple
desire is necessary, bones of bodies

crumble by the handful. Tasteless guilt
allow mouths to feed. Recognize these

bones as bodies, figure breaking points
and relinquish this necessity of damage. Take

this smooth and delicate hand and push
against what is not creature, bend over

and over. Learn these lines of soft surface still
breathing, trace this skin like your inchoate own.

Learn these lines that break, break
them again and see skin as skin, see

past the surface of mistake, outline its natural body
then plunge, making now what you never will again.