Paintings
Bye Bye
Burial
Burial Ground
I miss you
You left me on the Mountain
I was praying that everything would be OK
I was dreaming
There was nothing wrong with Loving you
And I said Eat me – Bring me back to Life
You please me
The Beginning and the end of Everything
Is Nothing Sacred
Dreaming of Another World
Like Another World
So much Love – So Much kissing, That I Love Myself
Cry
It hurt like death
I WAS RIGHT
Just Fuck You
No Where to Go No Where to be
We died Again
Yes I miss You
It Felt Like you Loved me
And It was Love
I went home
I Kept Moving
There was no Right way
There was blood
You Let me Fall
The Dark Side of the Moon
The End of Her
Works on Paper
I Felt you like you were here
I Knew you would come
God it hurt – You Hurt
Part of me
More Than Sleep
A beautiful Sleep
I left For Ever
I’d like to say this is not a love poem but I’d be lying — and as a rule, a good rule, I don’t lie. When I have lied the guilt has overwhelmed me. I hate myself, feel disgust, a shaky repulsion that sweeps through every vein in my body.
It’s the same when I lose my temper, it makes me physically ill and I cry. Today I haven’t lost my temper but I have cried, hot burning salted tears.
A few weeks ago I cried so much my eyelashes fell out, I guess from rubbing my eyes like a child. I know crying is good for the soul, it’s a great cleanser, it removes all the shit and silt that gets trapped in our brains. The dry dust of emotional time.
I know crying is good for the soul, it’s a great cleanser
When I had cancer I only cried twice — once, after the first MRI scan, I walked to my new house that was being renovated. I let myself in and sat on the stairs and a solitary tear ran down my face, I stamped my foot and said FUCK. I knew at that split second that something was wrong and I may never live in that house.
The next time I cried was after my surgery — I was in bed and my night bag had become unattached, two litres of stinking piss had saturated my sheets, mattress and duvet. I was too weak to change the bed and had to sleep on a mountain of towels with a blanket over me.
The reason I cried was because of the towels — in my long gone past the only reason I’d be laying on towels on my bed would be because of a giant tsunami of cum released in a wild frenzy of love-making.
The best thing about my surgery was when I came round and my surgeon gave me the great news that I still had my clitoris. I’d had half the wall of the inside of my vagina cut away and sewn up with barbed stitches, plus my urethra removed. I lay there feeling like not just my c*** had been torn away but half my being, My sex, my me, myself, my Tracey.
I went without sex for years, it sort of didn’t bother me unless I was drunk then I wanted to fuck the world. I went for about 10 years without a lover, without being physically loved. I was open to the world but never met anyone I felt I could love. Love for me is so important — I think because of having so much promiscuous sex when I was young, I was hell-bent on the real thing as I got older and the older I got the harder it was to fall in love. But then it happened — love came marching right into my life when I most needed to be loved and physically held down on this earth.
When I thought I might die it was that love that kept me alive. When I cried on that stair it’s that love that made me know that I’ve lived in that house and it was that love that didn’t care how the fuck the sheets became wet.
Love transcends everything, even the deepest fear.
Thank you, love, for everything, I just wish you could have stayed.
Tracey Emin is an artist
