My Lover Is…

I’m trying to push myself out of my comfort zone with writing and was challenged in a workshop by this wicked poet, Desree to use an “extended metaphor” in a poem. My understanding of an “extended metaphor’ is taking one metaphor, and running with it for the rest of the poem.

You’ll see the metaphor I used in the first line, and I decided to use this metaphor as a metaphor love, a lover to be precise. Love and lovers are a theme that I really enjoy exploring and will continue to write about.

I’m stepping into a period in my life where I’m looking to explore love and sex unapologetically and free from the shame my upbringing associated them with. The combination of repression, coloured by religion, and culture, coupled with repeated sexual abuse during my teenage years at the hands of an older man definitely created dysfunction. It led to compromised decisions around marriage and what was and wasn’t an acceptable level of intimacy.

Shit, I spent almost all of my decade long marriage NOT sharing a bed with my wife and thought that was normal.

Am now working on getting past that and looking to a future filled with love and intimacy and

My Lover Is…..

My lover is like a warm beanbag
Taking me in
Accepting me, with all my faults
Adapting to my contours
Never judging 
She is inviting
Beckoning me to let her wrap around me
Her embrace like that of my favourite beanbag
Comfortable
Comforting
Soft foam like flesh
A balm for the cruelties, hurt and misunderstanding of the outside world
Sometimes I wrap myself around her
We adapt to each other
Each day is closed out pressed against each other’s naked flesh