Women are a portal

on queer pleasure and God

Xenia Hausner’s Pure Cool — acrylic, oil on dibond 2016

At Last
The skies above are blue

I’m singing Etta James in your living room
after a glass or three of wine

Between stints on the balcony, overlooking the trees
and the black leather of your couch

When I kiss your cheek, I feel something
maybe everything?

The connected universe
it lives in the skin cells we share

I like the way your eyes look at me
when you are

Overwhelmed with sensation

Your precious moans of desperation
the smooth laugh you never restrain
all of it radiates the feminine
the one that lives in me, and you

am I still there when you close your eyes?

I have not been a person of faith all my life
but I’ve known God in the arms of women
I’ve felt it reaching out, calling me
and I know that it’s real

I like it when you take my bowl to the dinner table for me
When you make sure I’m comfortable, at ease
Do you have everything that you need?

I like how you listen
eat my words
savour them down to the very last syllable
Like it’s gospel truth

I always thought it couldn’t get any better
than the morning after
even when I was a girl, I dreamed of

Tangled limbs and tired eyes
a woman’s hair cascading alongside mine
pheromones in a chemical marriage
a gendered bind that ties

the ones who question it all know
there is just no holding back
a heart full of fire

I have not been a person of faith my whole life
but I have seen God in a woman’s irises
I’ve heard it in her elated sighs

and I’ll die before you tell me
I can’t witness it for all of time

[ the divine and I, we have this special relationship. It is nor traditional or indoctrinated. I’ve read the Bible just for fun, just to see what it was all about. ]

And here’s what I think;

If we can believe in these stories, then I find it easy to believe it when
I see stars on the edges of her
about to burst

We make up stories and pass them ear to ear
or we write them down for centuries and assume
that the truth lives on a page
throbbing like a heartbeat
but couldn’t it also live in her breath, above me?

nothing makes me believe in the universe’s timing more

in the stars, the moon and their astrological hierarchies

than the gasp of a woman when she receives

all she desires, the feelings she is owed, every measure of pleasure

Maybe it’s God?
sending all this rage to the surface
saying yes, yes
yes

Women are the portal
to a higher place, to our emotions, to the sweetness that comes only

once we see divinity as a whole being, a living, breathing entity

Women are the portal

I’ve seen it firsthand
hand first
I’ve been inside it, and it gleams
of every pain that persists, and every joy that exists.