The Invitation

Challenge Five
Creative Writing ENGL 3516
Professor Meyer
July 06, 2006
Composed by Richard Birch
This work Copyright (C) 2006 Richard Birch

I have never expected such an invitation,
or that I would be invited to such a place
where one goes to die and be reborn
again and again.
This could easily be my church.
As spiritual and loving as all the lands
touched by the heat of Dionysus
as intoxicating as a first love since my own surfacing,
I have been asked to be
cradled in the restraint of the moment
by the chains and cuffs of a cross
framed in such a way
offered to one so worthy of me.

Never from this stance have I before seen the room.
Always from the circle have I until now taken view.
Yet now I am centred, staged in the place
where the warmth of hell and the bliss of paradise
will converge on my flesh.
The spark on my side feels like the love,
previously given from my own two hands
time and time again to others who have submitted before me.

Yet an previous unknowing of myself
prevented me from taking such a scene as my own
among friends who wish me hurt,
among those who wish me hurt but unharmed.
My surprise is not in that I lack trepidation in this time space.
Since Santiago’s passionate and twisting hand’s,
I have craved this ferocity.
From the moment I was touched in such a fashion.
it has all I have wanted from this fervent subjectivity.

I accepted without hesitation.

Tremors awake in my arms and legs.
A sweltering maze of blood and release rise underneath my skin.
I hold my calling out,
for the impulse is deep and embedded in what I need to learn.
My eyes are blindfolded,
my hands bound high.
my legs buckled firm like the roots of my own oppression.
I sense everything around me.

It is sublime to give away agency.
It is beautiful to partake in the joy
knowing it is I who controls the moment,
For once in my pain I hold everything.

A ring of onlookers in black leather standing around us
listen and watch and speak of power.
The club is as dark as my keeper is sober.
The dance floor is as dark as my nerves are illuminated.
Before long I no longer know my name.
Within minutes I for the first time feel the essence of my humanity
as black gloves and a low voice authenticate my fiercest desires.
I am thus enveloped in a torturous act of respect.

I always know someone is with me.
There is always someone holding my hand.
There is always a whispering voice asking me if I am all right.

It is like a home.

In moments of desperation my voice is lost,
heard only behind my lips.
My voice is held in place firmly
by the strength of a thousand leather bands.
The collar encircling my neck dictates my voice.
But there is always someone to notify the one who has accepted
this rare moment from me that I seem fulfilled
in this place I have travelled to.

Needles piercing my skin
release the daggers enshrined in my mind
that pin me to the walls constructed and surrounding me
since my first memory.
Within this circle of dark haunting relentless torture
I reconstruct my core as the lashing persists,
as if I were framed in prickly glass wires circling my ever-present energy,
signifying complete neglect of despair.

Assistants unbound my hands and feet
and hold my skeleton erect to receive an embrace from my keeper.
I recognize I hold no mastery here.

That is true bliss.

Time resumes its motion.
Space expands back to previous perceptions.
I am released fortified in such a dark dungeon of loving harshness
when I realize
the darkest place on earth contains that brightest illumination.

Now unbound and redressed,
my agency given away has been returned with fire.
My removal from this space
leaves no evidence
of my
existence.
My walk home seems effortless.
The dark streets of the city are
beautiful
and
soft.
The night sky is alluring
and
soothingly
present,
as is
everything else.