When everything goes black.
My sacred companion, disregard,
She soothes.
Like the dull blade of contempt,
She maims.
Whispering,
So much blame.
So much blame.
A mercenary with an end game.
A victim with my name.
So much blame.
So much blame.”
She’s unmoving except for her vigilante thumb still sweeping, determined to encourage me, comfort me, and arouse me—because it’s doing all three. Which is at odds with the silence—it’s crushing me, humiliating me, and filleting me.
Unable to bear my unease, paired with my boner, I make a move to get off the bed while hurriedly saying, “I should go—”
Her grip tightens on my hand and before I can rise, she’s pushed me on my back and is hovering over the top of me, her long hair like curtains on either side of my face. “No, you most certainly shouldnotgo.” She pauses and swallows. “I’ve never wished I could touch someone’s voice before, but I want to touch yours so badly my fingers itch.” Her statement has the reverse effect and I feel tactile-lessly touched by her words. Stroked. Tempted. Stimulated. “You wrote that?” she whispers like the moment won’t allow for anything more.
“Yeah. It’s stupid, I know.”
She shakes her head and puts a hand over my mouth so I can’t talk. “No, it’s not stupid. It’s gut-wrenching, and sad, and painful, and severely gorgeous. You have no idea what you reciting poetry does to me. That wassexy.”
“Really?” I ask from behind her hand.
“Come on, Toby. You know you’re sexy, poetry or not.”
I shake my head, bewildered by her response. I’ve never been called sexy in my life.
She releases me and says, “To your core,” while she climbs off the bed and walks out of the room only to return seconds later with a spiral notebook and a blue Bic pen with a gnarled cap that’s been chewed unmercifully. “Please write that down. And then read it to me again. And again. Poems flirt like hell with my mind.” The flush in her cheeks tells me she means it.
I feel the same way about songs I love.
I write the poem down.
Then I read it.
Again.
And again.
And again.
At her request.
I’m sitting on the bed. She’s standing. Pacing in the narrow space between the wall and the bed. And she’s smiling—it’s contemplative, and turned-on, and melancholy. After the fourth reading she asks, “Is that how you really feel? Deep down where you don’t hide?”
Yes. “No,” I lie before I can stop myself.
