poetry

four-chambered heart

for sunday scribbling: wingsI have said that she gives me wings.

I have said that, though I have been collecting feathers my entire life, downy and sweet, flight and contour and semiplume feathers, even occasional bristle feathers and filoplume feathers, it was her who gave me the map, the blueprint, for the abilities to soar, to take off and land, to catch a ray of wind and float.

I have said she takes me to such heights, takes me to the peaks of mountains, looking down over valleys where everything below is neat and organized, small, managable.

I could continue with the bird metaphors, hollow bones and unfolding; flying, nesting, cracking open; a four-chambered heart, ruby breasted; flocks and migration and hovering and perching.

But what I really want to say is that I was not raised to believe in pride. I don’t know what it’s like for others to take credit for my accomplishments, no matter how much my accomplishment was helped by your maps, your tender caresses, your careful slices of leather cut around the outlines of my feet for my landing.

This flight is my victory. And while you are calling to me from the clifftop, yelling claims to my own soaring moments, the air is so clear and still that all I can hear is the beating of my own wings.

Published by Sinclair Sexsmith

Sinclair Sexsmith (they/them) is "the best-known butch erotica writer whose kinky, groundbreaking stories have turned on countless queers" (AfterEllen), who "is in all the books, wins all the awards, speaks at all the panels and readings, knows all the stuff, and writes for all the places" (Autostraddle). ​Their short story collection, Sweet & Rough: Queer Kink Erotica, was a 2016 finalist for a Lambda Literary Award, and they are the current editor of the Best Lesbian Erotica series. They identify as a white non-binary butch dominant, a survivor, and an introvert, and they live outside Seattle as an uninvited settler on traditional, ancestral, & unceded Snoqualmie land.

2 thoughts on “four-chambered heart”

  1. Dylan says:

    “All I can hear is the beating of my own wings”… I love that. Pure, simple and true.

  2. Bohemian Mom says:

    omg…this is so real and such beautiful writing.
    Really good take on the post.

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