A Gift in the Label: Filth

They call it filth—  
words that name the want,  
the desire, the hunger, the ache,
the visceral need for places 
we are not supposed to go.  

Society draws its careful lines  
around the body and the tongue,  
declares some hungers unclean,  
some acts unspeakable,  
some desires too impure for daylight.  

Without their judgment
desire would be ordinary—
one more thing we tended to.

We would never know the ache
of thirsting for something
the world told us we should not want.

But they named it dirty.  
They hung a scarlet weight  
on every wet, rough, raw, 
thick, sweaty, carnal word.  

And for that I am grateful.  

Their disapproval is the whetstone  
that keeps the edge sharp.  
Without it, the poetry of kink  
would dull into the mundane.  

The forbidden rouses us.
We long for the taboo.
Their moral claim is what makes  
every whispered, “Yes, Mistress” 
taste like electricity on the tongue.  

So thank you, society,  
for your clenched judgments,  
your clutched pearls,  
your careful categories of pure and impure.  

You give these words their charge.  
You make secrecy delicious.  
You turn our darkest yes  
into a sacred, filthy altar  
where the only true sin  
is pretending we do not want more.

- Quinn Ren, The Mistress of More