Inside Benin’s sweltering heat, I furnish the threshold of my flesh with folds of inevitable desire. I gallop down the highway of imagination, thighs evaporate attention in a charge of hands. I peel off the fur of my longing &develop a valley of thirst that chews on all I offer with a solemn stroke. Men that overlap the edge of bibles denounce all I accomplish with tenderness & aim to desecrate the temple of my body. To stroke, they pronounce, is to bathe in a denomination of sin. Sometimes, the body wishes to not be mistaken for wood abandoned & allowed to echo the ritual of loneliness. Sometimes the church reads the book of enjoyment backwards. What this body craves is a moment shared with friction, a devotion to lasting satisfaction. Listen, I drape my tongue with a lake of melody to sound beautiful.