Into the Sluice Room

It’s like my tension with intimacy:

that desire to reject, but cling on,

the compulsion to stay, but pressure to run

from the churning turmoil of the body,

so wracked by nausea, made giddy

by the sight of fluids, the expression

of those visceral processes within,

by turn enthralling and revolting the senses.

To swill that gone, just flush it completely

makes sense, the only logical response.

But then, what’s left? A gleaming bowl, empty.

That’s why the sluice machine exists, to cleanse

every last trace of life but hope, and longing

to be filled with its mess, then be emptied again.