Tenderness

The soul of torture is male. - comment on an exhibit card at The Museum of Criminology and Torture, San Gimignano, Italy

The warded instruments of pain
set out among the tourists like
sweet creatures of the foliage…
You wonder why I’ve brought you here,
not knowing that my heart is like a fridge
with nightmares kept in plastic wrap.

‘It’s history’ I say, and so you file it away
as just another bloke-y quirk,
like dads with books on imperial wars.
I watch you stare and grimace at
a chair studded with nails and
a slanted copper pear, designed to bloom
when its lever is pulled and so destroy
the victim’s bowels. I am the groom
of suffering, I think as finally you balk
when what was called the Breast Ripper
is demonstrated on a pair
of polystyrene tits. I lead you from the lair.

‘Thank God’ you say, slaking your eyes
instead on crystal waves and market stalls.
I do not say, my love, that I
would hold you there, inside the halls
of inquisition and their odes
to toxic maleness. That I would kiss
and show you tenderness, beyond
what any copper sees and hears
when walking London streets,
beyond what I have ever known
in uniform or out. ‘Don’t worry’ I reply,
pulling you close to me. ‘You’ve got
police protection here.’ I grin,
you laugh, we walk away.