by Veronica Thorn
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But we enjoyed asphyxiation, didn't we? Stuck in the sheets, snaking around. Paper thin sheets over your exhaust fume ribcage, me sucking the rim of your armpit, my flames a firefly's torchlight expedition through the night sky, the wraith sheets, wavering between life and death, Bowie knife to our throats and a pistol fixed on the gatekeeper's bladder—one false move gets celestial poison caustic spreading through your thorax. And you never minded the roaches on the wall, lecherous survivors.
School was a funeral pyre that you stamped out and then I found you, my protégé. You were no elephant man and I was no Anthony Hopkins. We'd splinter bones and shed our fluids, blood, lubrication, pus, squeeze our wounds to reach that shining high point, my two-headed boy. One head for each of my holes, razor breath cloud in the ghost shroud sheets, pumping moisture into me backwards double time—I wanted to scream water, wanted to claw my breasts off, wanted to insult my body, call them titties and leak from my pores, float through the window on a lifeline of quivering osmosis, simultaneous sensation pulsing through that tube, the one that attaches spirit to navel. I wanted to shiver through the melting glass and do pull ups from the top branch of your elm tree. It was that good. You were my come-angel.
But the elm tree silhouette was yours and could never live without you, the disease already migrated, festering, devouring elm guts even as your life wavered. You loved that tree—death struggle brothers. When the sheets were stained, not pink, but dying red, uterine waste and my foul mood, you'd be cross-legged on the table by the window, lost in the halloween limbs of your winter elm.
With snowflakes in my eyes I'd look up at that tree, a titan spider on its back, legs in the air, dying, squirming in tree time, infinitely unperceived. Every oxygen exhale gave me life and made it more a shell, dead and ugly like the husks the cicadas left every seven years.
We always knew you didn't have long, when you pumped me full, we both felt the tick ti-tacka tick of your death rattle heart. But you wouldn't count your shudders—a life-gamble orgasm is still an orgasm.
We thought that maybe if we could keep it up, we'd find the essence in the solution, the fluids would evaporate and we could pickle the solute, the paste of our togetherness.
But two-headed boys are ephemeral. I threw your pictures in the fire to keep you from fading. Your photo solution impression burned green.
The firemen kept the flames from spreading to all the other elm trees on the block, just yours, in merciful ashen pieces. It blocked the road for two days before they hauled it off in a rust graffiti dump truck. They'll put off taking out the stump for another two or three weeks until it gets warmer. In the meantime I’ll choke on Lysol and gargle bleach until I’m redeemed.
All content in SmokeLong Quarterly copyright 2003-2012 by its authors.
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