XIV

it is so long since my heart has been with yours

shut by our mingling arms through
a darkness where new lights begin and
increase,
since your mind has walked into
my kiss as a stranger,
into the streets and colours of a town—

that i have perhaps forgotten
how,always(from
these hurrying crudities
of blood and flesh)Love
coins His most gradual gesture,

and whittles life to eternity

—after which our separating selves become museums
filled with skilfully stuffed memories.


e e cummings, from the collection is 5 (1926)

Roiphe sees an effort to balance women's new-found surge of power in the narrative of female submission. In my own experience of submission, I saw something else entirely.

“We cannot ask why because the people who practice surrender — whether it is through floggers and contracts, dutiful adherence to the vows made within a ‘vanilla’ relationship, pious and unquestioning faith — are not a homogenous group. We’re not just women, we’re not just straight, we’re not just submitting to lovers or even other humans. The answer to the question of why is as varied as our numbers are varied. And our answers are subject to change as we change.”

—AV Flox