A Poem by Annie Brechin

Tainted Love

for Ed

When the smell of our shite mingles, that’s amore.
Sitting on the chilly crapper inhaling deeply, remembering
that there is no worst of you only best.
I’m a sadluck fool but hearts are made to be opened.
Hearing you grunt as you lift from the bedroom
(the moss green bedroom whose paint scheme I stole
from another poet I admired too much) — that’s amore.
Each huff, the panted numbers counting down.
I adore your body sore and backbroke striving for more.
When you scratch your balls while doing a jigsaw.
When you take the bins out. When I wash up.
Washed up on a shore of longing, all cuntlicked
so blissful I could burst, a sea urchin
flashing its spines out — isn’t that the best ecstasy?
Everything you waste is my favourite perfume.
You said our love language is doing things for each other.
But mine’s dirtier, down in the soil
where our excrement melds into a single unique soup.
Love, I would gild it if I could.

Annie Brechin has been published in Magma, Poetry Wales, Stand, The Wolf, B O D Y, Paris Lit Up, and others. Her debut full collection, The Mouth of Eulalie, was published by Blue Diode in 2022. She lives, writes and performs in Edinburgh.