Channel Orange

I barely look at you, only slices of you are visible through my lashes. In the dull circle of the beside table light, the orange glow that tints you seedy and pornographic, I make out the glitter of your open eyes, blue, grey, green, brown now they’ve been looking into mine so long. I look at you and see places for my mouth, my hands, my eyes, my demons, my hopes, my delights, my questions, my rush and tumble. We agree to give the album its due: an hour of touchless longing drenched in destabilising yes. Everything is crevice: the ear, the neck, the armpit, the groin, the back of the knee, the flush, the growing. By Pink Matter, pink matters dominate the room. I bury and breathe, you flex and yield, there is a press and a pressure. I have been watching your mouth for three tracks now, the way you open it to breathe or speak, to ask for pleasure or to give it. My heart slows to 60bpm with wall to wall wiry sinew and crisp public hair. And maybe this happened or is happening or might happen, but either way Frank Ocean’s channel orange is playing first track to last.