She told me to feel down the outside of her hips. But I couldn’t. She’s quite proud of those hips. I had come this far and I would not go any further. They were too curvey, too much not mine. Even my own body had become taboo for me to touch. My own fantasies culminated in women being disappointed. And now, as a real woman with real skin and a real desire for me attempted to coach my hesitation away, all my mind would go to was her eventual exit. What a whimp.
I’m smart enough. I’m sociable enough. Where does this all come from? My ex’s weren’t bad people. They didn’t strip me of anything valuable. If anything, I took from them. Maybe I hate myself for that. That would explain why hunger makes me happy and why eating is unconditional surrender.
“so much for that movie time”. I said, gesturing to the clock.
She shook her head and picked up her shirt from the floor. Her shoulders were slumped but she didn’t seem surprised. If she were disappointed it wasn’t in me.
“I’ve got to hand it to you, Blake. At least your writing is truthful. You don’t find honesty that often in people your age. People will read Bukowski and take up ‘drinking’, but that’s not you.”
Her tone was porous, open to interpretation.
“What do you mean? I read Bukowski.”
The door swung behind her and would have slammed if the window wasn’t shut. This was an opportunity to finally dream about the sex I didn’t have. I could imagine her now. Her hips squarely atop mine and I do not say no. Her hands, grasping for support that I wouldn’t give and that she wouldn’t find. Her breasts are no longer hers. They are now beckon to the whim of my pace. Is she in pain? She slows. She breathes steady, fixed and conscious. Her eyes assume motherly concern for my well being. And now she knows that writing and reading are just things I do in place of living. I do say no.
--------------------
She made no fuss. They were topped by the ceiling, short enough to bring lights face-side, backs crooked to adopt the slope. The floor was unkept and children felt the cracks with bare feet. Some of them would know the foundation intimately, some would know a traditional grave. But the hallway thickened, ripened as they approached. Please, don’t make the smells stronger, they thought, for my inner adult knows that nothing will ever come close to this smell, and it will linger in me, dormant, spring loaded. My inner most adult is afraid of this place. My inner most adult knows exactly why I am downstairs. But I am a child and believe you when you say that there might be a tornado. Mister Kittingsworth, I am not below reason.
---------------------------
Quick headed, faced to beckon the seats opposed, he breaks protocol. And traced to now there’s one mark made. Be the place first or bust, his weekends stitching and cutting and spinning and holding them accountable. As for the break he’s made, its mending can wait. The skies are hidden here, and god cannot see fortune in high schools, in hotels, in rapist vans and we hope on this.
-----------------------------
Saw a baby in the grocerie store, mother gossips, bottle dangles on a shelf out of reach. I laugh. I can easily reach what it needs. It, because without the bottle it is dead. The dead are not thems. Thems do not need. Need is cold and absolute. Do they have a cigarette aisle?
-----------------------------
“I can’t stand being a civilian” he said. “ I wish I were back on active duty.”
I couldn’t understand. But I wanted to. I wanted to need something identifiable. The army is not a dream, it is a straight spine and blood free, arched feet and ivory eyes, men and women, of whom we owe a question: what’s it like to be me?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment
we'll soon see what you're up to.