If there is one language common to the world, it is the language of affection. Attractions swells, sex sells, motherhood tears the body apart, nostalgia seeps into the soul, heartbreak reverberates in the thrum of our blood as humans continue to love and lose. I’ve been trying to encapsulate those affections that different languages across the world express, through a myriad of stunning words. Sensations of love, lust and loss are fleeting through the course of our lives and yet forever, as we grow into the people we are meant to be. Eternal. So here it is – a series of poetry that captures affection in every syllable and word.

Dictionary of Affections is The Zoya Project language, common to the world…

BASOREXIA

‘The overwhelming desire to kiss’

I smoked a cigarette
Let my lips form an ‘o’
Blew
And watched
Puffs and rings
Float in a sooty daze
And then dissipate.

Bubbles burst
In my stomach
As I thought
Of my lips
Just
Barely
Touching
The salted rim
Of a margarita glass.

Giggled as
Fireflies
Like fairies
Osculated
And
Caressed the curves
Of the moon.

Let the wonder soak through me
As I watched,
A cherry blossom
Pinked at the edges
With a cherry kiss
Tinting it’s center,
And saw the meandering honeybee
Kiss the petals
And the stamen
And with
A carefree nonchalance
Be on its way.