Kinbaku

A body of wound
threads, I resign to him,
for this is routine
when I must lose
my breaths to
the morning bind,
an aubade to
the stuff of me
that grips
too tightly.
I allow his
arrangements –
an armature
erected, painted
by silk and hemp.
Hanging desires:
the sweet
of torque,
the defiance
of gravity,
(the paralysis
I always
resisted).

Travis Lau is a doctoral candidate at the University of Pennsylvania Department of English. His research interests include long eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British literature, the history of medicine, disability studies, body studies, and gender and sexuality studies. His work has been published in the Journal of Homosexuality and Romantic Circles. His creative writing has appeared in Westwind, Thistle, Spires, Feminine Inquiry, Wordgathering, Synaesthesia, and QDA: A Queer Disability Anthology (Handtype Press, 2015).