by f-cynyr
I certaintly can't say this is a "sweet" poem, its sad and enigmatic and tragic - the last stanza in particular hit me where it really hurts. But you capture it so well.
It may be me projecting, but this poem seems to illustrate what goes wrong in BDSM. The Dom gives pain, which he appears to be expert at, but the sub is not enjoying it, and thus neither is he. There is despair and sorrow instead of a glowing endorphin rush and that entwined spiral of pleasure/pain. What the sub seems to seek and get is battery and emptiness, and in the end there is nothing. No aftercare, "No reaching of hands / No sharing of warmth. / Just the silence / and the darkness." Too many people equate abuse with love, too many people seek to quell the demons within through giving or receiving pain. I was filled with sadness for the Dom, for in this scenario there was no power exchange, no eroticism, just grimness. Was he just an instrument of the punishment the sub inflicted upon herself? The question in my mind is why continue? Safe and consensual this might have been, but sane? No... The Dom should have stopped, I think, when he found he was not enjoying the process, when pleasure and dialogue were absent, when it was revealed that the pain-slut's motivation was abuse. The sub in this scenario needed therapy on a couch, not at the end of a lash. She was in BDSM for the wrong reasons.
BDSM gone bad here
It's not about power but
Just about pain and
When it backfires the
Sub has all the power.