I Will Live Many Years In This Room

I wanted my desire to be my own private thing

but I told a faith healer about you

with the delyghtful impatience 

pheromonal pilgrims feel

in the details of their Benedictine encounters

with corners 

and curves, walnut wood, bolsters, and hair under hand 

a relic to remind me: you are a living body

and that when that body breaks down 

it is no longer composite from mind.

Please let me remind you, I lived a whole life at that party,

replaced my body with another one.

The steading courtyard and the fire

burnt embers ruminated beside married couples sitting on outdoor furniture 

a languid barbecue smoked behind them

whilst I squirmed on that plastic.

Hoping to find a spectacular event awaiting me

I went back into the house, and I lay down in a bed, 

in a room with a window overlooking the fountain outside, 

and in that bed was a body, which lay beside another body, 

which lay beside another body,

and the sheets were white linen and they were soft to touch.

There needed to be an anvil to smash.

The harte was held inside a wicker basket 

yet still it infiltrated itself further, into the countertop, the table, and the fixtures,

the plants, and the window glass.

It was in the milk.

It was in the jam. 

Beside the hearth was a hessian sack of old self which withered and faded out then 

as the thumb touched high on the neck of the gift horse,

a ripening fruit.

The house: a party palace.

Don’t tell me I’ve been here too long.

My heart is full of the secret.

I await the day my desire will be returned,

waiting, being the rarest and purest form

of generosity.

And like that

we shall love, 

and love more.

Writing by Gwen Dupré

Video Documentation by Rebekah Lowri