You
\nspeak in so many tongues to me
\nas you journey languorously
\ndown my body.<\/p>\n
I
\nam learning every day
\nto decipher what it says
\nwhen it tarries on my ears.<\/p>\n
Your
\ntongue is a miraculously flexible muscle
\nleaping with neat dexterity
\nfrom one beautiful task to another.<\/p>\n
My
\nmouth is agape when it works
\nlike a curious shapeshifter
\nbending and melting to your will.<\/p>\n
You
\ncan make me seem endlessly sensual
\nwith your tongue moving in mutating ways
\nto define a neglected contour of me.<\/p>\n
I
\nam stuck using it in just one way,
\noppressed by the tyranny
\nof my unidimensional expertise.<\/p>\n
Because you,
\ncalling yourself a Village Idiot,
\nswitch off between Urdu and French
\nand Hindi and Persian and Magahi
\nto embrace me in various ways,<\/p>\n
And turn me
\ninto an erudite City Simpleton,
\nstrapped to the English language
\nwith my tongue stuck in an intricate
\nbut single, static, unchanging loop.<\/p>\n
Sweetheart
\nHoney
\nSugar.<\/p>\n
Endearments are funny things.<\/p>\n
They invite you to think of me
\nas loving and sweet and gentle
\nand also patently addictive
\nwhen I’m none of those things.<\/p>\n
You might call me<\/p>\n
Salty-soul
\nBittergourd
\nLemon.<\/p>\n
But<\/p>\n
I wonder why we must always
\nbe a taste
\nto each other
\na sensory titillation that is
\nMeant to be Consumed.<\/p>\n
Language has trapped both
\nyou and me, my love,
\ninto an eternal cycle of
\ntaking a few tentative
\nlicks and nibbles and bites
\nof each other
\nand then
\npassing
\na judgment<\/p>\n
much the same way that
\nwe pass gas
\nafter a disagreeable meal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
You speak in so many tongues to me as you journey languorously down my body.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":193,"featured_media":13731,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,3401,1562,8],"tags":[1563,68,1564],"class_list":{"0":"post-13728","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-categories","8":"category-fiction-poetry","9":"category-language-and-sexuality","10":"category-voices","11":"tag-language","12":"tag-sex","13":"tag-sexual-exploration"},"menu_order":772,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13728","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/193"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13728"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13728\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23370,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13728\/revisions\/23370"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13731"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13728"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13728"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13728"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}