Taken from our Outsider issue, Rafael S.W’s poem explores the corporeal restrictions between lovers. Illustrated by Sébastien Thibault.

My lover will one day be someone else.
Almost all of him. I’m reminded I own nothing,
and nor does he. This skin, our careful stamp album
of woundings. That will be a graft. Passed on
passport maybe. I’ve been in synch with his lungs
and they too will go elsewhere. Draw warm air
through strange lips. The deep sea creatures
of organs with uses I don’t know, they will
be bottled briefly, or netted from his sacred sacrum.
I hope I am dead before this. We should have
made a pact. It is not for loneliness, but rather
the fear of seeing him unzipped. And knowing
it was not me who lay claim to his heart.

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