Tabula Rasa

This is what should be written on the body – not some crime scene autopsy for the coroner to decipher. No, these are the words of the living. They are the sounds of your heart’s tattoo, the fluttering in your chest when you see him walking towards you, your ecstatic eye roll and the shudder of every orgasm. These feelings without words, sensations without sound, trapped in flesh just below your surface.

Subtle murmurs make everything worthwhile: your breath on my skin, your hands moving over me as I drift to sleep, your eyes that raise the tiny hairs on the back of my neck as you watch me walking out the door. The body remembers, even when the mind has forgotten. We slip into our old rhythms without thinking. It feels good, but later we have our regrets. Why do we compartmentalize, shun, taunt the body for its tainted love? The mind is just as weak in the face of desire, but because memories fade sooner than scars, we consider this better, stronger. Like the mist that evaporates on a verdant hill, or the waters that recede as we approach barefoot, the mind tugs the rug out from under memories that pain us.

But the body remembers in every scar, every scratch. Here is where he loved me, and here is where he hated me. These reminders look the same to the casual observer, but I know the difference. One cuts deeper. One stays fresh. One still tingles when it rains.

Let me trace your palm, read your lifeline, tell your fortune based on the lines of your body. There is a story in every wrinkle, every curve, every scar. We don’t have the words to tell them all. They are silent reminders, witness to years and experiences we will never share with the strangers that surround us. Let me write my own predictions for your distant future. Try to guess which words I am forming as I scroll them down your back.

Roll your own pen across my spine, carve out shapes I will never see, decipher. Use a brush to paint your Kama Sutra suite, sign your name in kanji, mark me as your own. Use the Arabic word for God in praise of my shape, my texture. I am the finest surface on which you will ever write. Take your time. Remember how it feels to consider the shape of each letter before placing it carefully on the page. Bind me like a book. Stroke my spine. Learn to love the object as a subject. Embrace the text; embrace me. Textuality is sexuality. Read my body’s language and return my unspoken sentiments in whatever language you choose.

Everything is written on this body, from the question mark in your eyes to the certainty of your lips. You are a thousand books I will never finish, but long to pore over on a lazy afternoon. You are silence and mystery, you are words spoken and shouted, you are the spaces in between that can crush or caress. I can feel the weight of all these words when you enter my room, and with a flick of your wrist they are gone. My head empties, your lips meet mine, we move into that white space beyond words, beyond pain, beyond everything that exists for just a moment of bliss and then mourn our return to language with the smallest of sighs.

Laura Roberts is Black Heart’s Founder, Publisher and Editor-in-Chief.