Reflections on the Nature of Love & Sex: An Emotion

My older daughter, Héloïse, is developing the cover design for my collection of poems, using a sculpture by my younger daughter, Paloma (see below). Do you have a preference?

AN EMOTION

The pain is unbearable,

gut-wrenching,

like a kick in the solar plexus.

Interesting, how we relish

the pain of working out.

We work for it, through it.

Is it not the same pain?

Is it not only the context that changes?

You are gone.

The emptiness fills my being.

Your absence feels like the very absence of air.

I am suffocating.

I need you,

want you,

cannot live without you.

It hurts.

Yes, it is supposed to hurt.

The pain validates the beauty and power

of our experience together.

I remember,

as if just yesterday,

sitting at a café in Greece,

a dock where one takes the boat from

Corfu to Santorini.

I was alone, attempting to read,

but irresistibly distracted by two young men

sitting at a table next to me,

obviously lovers,

both in tears, bawling.

The end of a torrential love affair?

I returned to my reading.

The details were irrelevant.

Everything prior

was expressly for that purpose,

that very moment:

An emotion.

Yet, despite this understanding,

I feel anger.

Ivan Lins, in his song “Like a Lover” says:

“How I envy the glass that knows your lips.”

I now detest that glass,

loathe those same lips that just yesterday,

brought me such solace, resolve, and pleasure.

I know that la vida continúa,

that the pain is transient.

Your absence will become less significant.

You will ultimately become a memory.

Yet, even armed with this knowledge,

the pain is undiminished.

In this moment,

I know what dying is like.

I feel a pain so deep,

that only death can assuage.

I am anxious, jittery, hyperventilating....

breathe slowly, deeply, focus on the breath...

three, two, one...

visualize myself descending an escalator...

Yet, at every step,

I encounter your eyes, lips, your embrace.

I am again diaphoretic,

can no longer see tomorrow.

I need your touch, your caress.

I find myself in the company of women.

Lovers with whom I shared so much passion,

willing, perhaps out of pity,

perhaps because they appreciate

the child within this facade of braggadocio,

or simply because they empathize with my

suffering, to offer their solace.

Yet, I find no attraction,

no desire in those breasts that utterly

fascinated me,

those buttocks that made me erupt

like Mt. Vesuvius,

or the simple pleasure derived from the

warmth of a lithe, nubile body.

Now there is only emptiness.

I am now a eunuch.

My genitals lifeless, a vestigial appendage.

Yes, your raw,

unadulterated beauty is inescapable,

but this is not what binds me to you.

It is not the loss of this,

albeit heavenly and desirable attribute,

that drives me to madness.

The immensity of my suffering

lies simply in the fact that you,

unwittingly, as no other woman ever has,

provided me with a glimpse of paradise,

an encounter with infinity,

of all that could be.

I truly appreciate that you offer me friendship,

but my desire for you overwhelms me.

I cannot and will never be able to look

in your eyes and commune with them,

see your lips and resist

the impulse to kiss them,

nor be anywhere near you and suppress

my compulsion to make love to you.

Why so much pain?

Why so much drama?

The details are irrelevant.

Everything prior was expressly

for this purpose,

this very moment:

An emotion.

---

Paloma completed this sculpture while living and going to school in Paris. I fell in love with it immediately and decided to use it for the cover of my collection of poems, "Reflections on the Nature of Love and Sex."

Here are some of her other sculptures:

Paloma is looking for opportunities to work as an apprentice or do a residency with a master, so please let me know if you have any contacts.