Chosen Ruin
When desire arrives properly,
it does not knock.
It enters like bad weather
through whatever weakness
the house has kept secret:
a window latch,
a parted mouth,
the small fatal gap
between what one means to do
and what one has already begun.
You stand there
with that look people wear
just before they become
expensive to themselves.
The room knows.
The lamp has gone gold with complicity.
The chair in the corner
has the stillness of a witness
who will never speak,
not from virtue,
but from taste.
Your dress on the floor
is no longer clothing.
It is evidence.
My shirt beside it
looks less removed than sentenced.
Everything white in the room
has become obscene:
the sheets,
the wall,
the moon at the window
like a rich man
paying to watch.
This is what language cannot admit in daylight:
some nights are not tender.
Some nights are chosen ruin,
a private collapse entered willingly,
with clear eyes
and the full intelligence of the blood.
Come here.
Not sweetly.
I want the version of you
that steps across the line
as if it were only chalk:
the hand that does not tremble,
the mouth that understands power,
the silence that already knows the verdict.
Let the dark take sides.
Let your fingers learn
the cost of my restraint.
Let my name in your mouth
sound like something stolen.
Let the clock go on
with its small mechanical morals
while we commit
the old intelligent crimes.
Desire is never clean.
Only honest.
And I,
knowing all this,
would still come closer.
Because there are moments
when the body,
tired of diplomacy,
declares its own government,
and the mouth says yes
with such authority
the rest of the soul
has no choice
but to sign.
Afterwards,
the room will resume its manners.
The lamp will pretend it saw nothing.
The chair will return to being furniture.
The moon will withdraw its filthy blessing.
But for those few black minutes,
with your hand at my throat
and your silence refusing all appeal,
the whole world will confess
what it wanted all along.