Book XI

Abstinence Reveals Proof of Plato’s Three Parts of the Soul

Laura Stephenson

At which point I swore never

again to let this body out of my rational control.

He left, and I tied my tongue down

with a chloroformed rag.

I tried to starve out lush gluttony,

but appetite choked out its final SOS.

After those erratic texts were left unresponded,

my true temperance followed.

Desiccated by restriction;

virtue is a dusty thirst.

At which point, in my newly empowered logic,

self-restraint stripped all identity

except my name. Without love’s aim,

I busied with new obsessions:

vitamin IVs, calorie deficiencies,

turn body into mind’s utility.

At night, the belly of my unconscious roared

with wanton dreams, stirred sandalwood

spice and earthen musk. His remembered scent.

His memory, my appetite’s spirit

of hartshorn when cerebral slept.

At which point, I dosed herbal tinctures

each night to linger there.

Let all enlightened control succumb

to laboured breath.

In sleep, my animal delirium conceived

a realm more corporal than life,

one where he remained. Those dreams

crept into waking hours, infected me to haunt

my own hallways, roam

in sleep paralysis, to discover him trapped

in inanimate cracks. His eyes,

my spectral recollection,

a voiceless wail in every floor vent.

All shadows became my regret.

At which point my addiction reawakened.

That immense hunger wrestled

my head and heart and fed one to the other.

With all logic consumed,

spurned lust fuelled a spirited rage.

I resumed as pleasure’s tyrant,

numbed self-restraint.

Exorcised his phantom

with a swallow of any tongue

that met mine.

This is temporary, reason whispered deep

within, all shit stained and sober—