Sex, Kink, and the Erotic: “Blue” by Yuxi Lin

Blue 

Take me to your bed, wherever you are.  
Touch me with your mind & make haptic love.  

Forgive my wanting.  
Possession is a desire cemented by loss.   

I tried to be a cat person for you, learned the grip  
of an egg holder, the tap of a spoon  
when what I wanted  
was to slurp the yolk & be consumed. 

Once again I find myself facing blue. 
I see the sun along the horizon, 
the lines of a bridge when viewed from below. 
The blue river snaking under your skin — 
I’d followed it to its end.   

Before I touch myself  
I take a memory out of its drawer & color it blue —  
the bend of your knee where I first touched you,  
the roundness of your shoulder bone.   

What do you call lust for a stamen with its many curled lips? 
One smooth edge rubbing another, barely touching.  
Rust on the blue & it’s hurting hurting, 
the red red & the blue bleeding through. 

A cut color will not return to its original hue. 
I know what I must do. 
The day is moving but I don’t want to. 

About Yuxi Lin

Yuxi Lin is a 2019 AAWW Margins Fellow and 2018 winner of the Breakout 8 Writers Prize. Her writing has appeared in Poetry, The Southern Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, The Cincinnati Review, Nashville Review, RHINO, The Margins, Electric Literature, and elsewhere. She has received support from Millay Colony for the Arts and the Djerassi Residency. She graduated from New York University’s MFA Program in Poetry as a Lillian Vernon Fellow. Follow her on Twitter @yuximerollin.