click here to play the soundtrack for this piece, by our resident musician Verführervergelter.

gloves

Singer Joy

–

i wear my gloves when i’m out. i can’t use my phone when i have my gloves on. my sub unlocks my phone when i have my gloves on. my gloves match my sub’s collar only mine are leather. theirs is velvet. i wear my gloves when i’m working. i wear my gloves skiffing paperwork. i can’t scroll in my gloves. more tether to the tactile and yet less. i can’t feel. i can’t feel their thigh except by pressure and heat. pressure of the gloves pressed in by their skin beneath their clothing, so many layers cloth on cloth that they too only pressure. so weird that im wearing gloves all the time. weird girl archetype under her hoodie in her two beers to the afternoon in her sitting on the computer all day in her face by the blue light dying childhood in the teen light of games on the hand on the rockband drumkit Coke-brand mountain dew money for tattoos and instruments kind of lifestyle. not really into jogging, no. anyway i wear my gloves on their skin too. on their face and in their mouth. i wear my gloves. touching their skin i wear my gloves. i love you in my gloves. it’s freezing in my office. my hands are smaller than most and im working two jobs in that studio, where there’s little heat because we have to keep the door closed for the tragically urinary-infected cat. that in and of itself isn’t torturous but if you have weak muscles. i mean. like if you have a chronic weakness. cold sets into prearthritic fingers. living and exhausting by keyboard backlight, elaborating well above a word count, transcribing secrets with the expensive, medicated, unfed shaking skilled and pedigreed hands, videogame manipulating into the long hours yes so fast and so delicate each instrument, platformer, knifework, buttonhole, circuit repair worn on the phalanges, the lifelong cold of a basement in thenar space, the pain of articulating in caffeinated taps, tics of phantom woodwind fingerings as anxiety soother and aggravator, while the body accrues tension and damage which coils brainward from the ulna.

and so if you have that you have to wear the gloves on the phone can’t call you. red leather gloves on you change my tampon for me. i have three pairs leather, one red motorcycle, Benz brand, one red with ivory lace accent, and one violet for winter; two sets of black one suede and one lace and one greytight compression. gloves like the sun. gloves in bed. how much of you can i feel with my mind. if you rearrange me you would find some patches cloth, not only skin as some think, but gloves make the hand. mask makes the face. without i am only cold bone powerless. with is the choice i have made. excess of the body to mark the body’s real endpoints.

i wear my gloves pressurized, clinging to the hand whole body hug, the gloves hold me together when touch does not when skin and bone fail there are the gloves. when the apartment fails, –

🧤🧤