Of Purpose 

 by Lara Konrad

 

We start at my collarbone and stop at the waist. It just always feels so available. My tiny body, I know, inspiring ownership in you and in people. You tell me how soft I am, and I disregard your compliment with a smile because I can’t  understand what it’s like to feel my skin. I only know the feeling of people liking to feel it. And that’s usually the one thing on my mind when I apply calendula oil on my body every morning, after the shower—hands of others, knowingly wanting to touch me. A short while after being really kind of tender—your tongue and lips, leaving behind wet traces on my neck and earlobes—you grab my skin a little tighter and start to pull my hair back. It hurts now and then, but isn’t it supposed to? You think it’s hot when I moan regardless. Softest hard moans. Never too loud, because that’s cheap. And because our mothers and history taught us better than that. I only moan out of real impulse because, babe, you feel so good. When parts of you continue to touch and see me, I suck in my stomach, curve my spine anew. Stretching my long and skinny limbs beyond the horizon makes us think you could never love fucking another body. Because I’ll be all you need, babe. I swear I’ll try my hardest so you’ll want to stay here at least a little longer than you’ve existed elsewhere. Like, I’ll be the home of your choice. I convince myself if I keep moaning and shaving and laughing and cumming, you’ll never leave. I promise, I’ll always want to fuck if my stomach is flat and my pussy smooth. As our bodies merge further, there’s the immediate expectancy of cumming, simultaneously joining and separating the two of us. An automatic reality cultivated, above all, in the soft and wet holes of my body. Guaranteed, even if fictional. Because, what matters most is that you feel good about yourself, babe. I know I need to cum, on you and in you, with and without you. Otherwise, I’m not the woman you’ll love. The woman you make cum so fast, over and over. When your fingers have reached into the far distances of my lacerations, the sound of my body shifts with urgency as I pretend to cum in your hand for the first time. You then grab me from behind, and I keep my four limbs steady like the walls of a city. Or something just as lovely and seizable. Meanwhile your cock and hands grind my face into the ground and you gradually begin to fuck me a little harder, I’m mostly concerned about how disfigured the face must look. My forehead and lips and cheeks and eyelids, dragging back and forth on the surface of the bed. Moaning, right then, helps me feel desirable while looking this ugly. After pretending to cum one more time, I ask you to lie on your back. I pour my hips over yours and try my best to concentrate. I’ll be here until I’ve finished. Getting off can be fast. Sometimes it takes real work, though. Especially when you expect me to cum sooner, with your cock thinking it still needs to fuck me. If you don’t move, babe, it’s much easier. Trust me. I slide my clit back and forth on your stomach. The harder it is, the better it feels. When we finally cum—first me, then you—I fall down on your chest, organic and involuntary. Our genitals begin to separate, both of us breathing heavily. I’m usually thirstier than you, babe. It must be from all that moaning, I guess. My mouth, always half-way open. Since my legs can’t stop shaking, you turn your head toward me. With your eyes bloodshot and sedated from all that living and dying and living, you notice how beautiful I look. All that vulnerability. You say nothing. Once our bodies and breath calm down, you ask why I didn’t want to be licked down there. I give an answer that’s a suitably easy answer. Like, I don’t feel like being mouth-fucked right now, babe. Like, I’d much rather be fucked by the whole of you because you fuck so good. Actually, though, I’ll always want your mouth too, because it feels like I’m nurturing you. And somehow that image seems so right to me. But how can I nurture justly if shaving the past three days makes the rash worse, and I don’t feel hot enough because the hairs won’t stop growing and the pores won’t stop bleeding. Yet, despite all that looming chaos below my belly, making me nervous how your cheeks and tongue must feel when they lick around and over skin at the point of breakage, I’ll try to pay better attention to the ease felt by your face pressing further into me. And the very moment you’re the one to be fastened in my mouth, babe—waiting with warm, thick love that has nowhere else to go except fall down a little further—I’ll surround you with all the tenderness of my hands and arms and permanence. When it’s time, I swallow you as the fountain that’s meant to live inside. I won’t stop until you haven’t. If there’s a need to, I swear, I suck you driest. After and in-between, I wonder if you’ve ever come close to knowing what it feels like to have a mouth be embalmed with cum, which today might taste a little more sour because of yesterday’s smoking and drinking. This feeling of graduality. Tepid fluid, cascading like nightfall. Down and down and down. And further down. I think you love me most after cumming in my throat.

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Lara Konrad

Poeta nacida en Alemania, creció en México y ha vivido en varios sitios a lo largo de su vida. A partir de la pandemia, vive y trabaja entre la campiña Lombarda y Munich. Es licenciada en poesía por la New School y tiene una maestría en bellas artes por el Sandberg Institute. Actualmente trabaja en su primera novela. Ha publicado en diversos medios de literatura como el New York Tyrant, Worms, Heavy Traffic, Civilization y en periódicos alemanes WELT y ZEIT.  Ha exhibido su trabajo en galerías como Balice Hertling, Ashes to Ashes y  Tobias Naehring. 

Entre sus publicaciones recientes se encuentra Mother we all have been lonely and Lovely Places, publicado por Gato Negro Ediciones en 2018.