notes on rocky, grace, consumption, back massages... and secrets.
come apart for me, grace.
now, become more and less than the things that make you. nutritionally void, but you speak at length about what humans intake for pleasure, and nothing else. nothing. just enormity. the inimitable pitch of give. a crease in the skin that will only remember me if i go deep, and i will not go deep, of course. you may trust me to be gentle but not to be truthful, i’m afraid. and i am afraid, because right now there is one vocal layer between you and me, just a layer between my indecent warbling and your very, very deserved questions.
but that is why we’re here. because you are vulnerable to my silence, at least like this, when your lashes fall in little impacts on your cheek and your stubble is catching, again and again, over your forearm. timpani. i am vile. i am far looser than i should be. i know that the meat in your head is weak to the base urges, so i pursue them, peel them like the skin you molt from yourself — and i pretend i have none of my own. i make home a whole world of pragmatists. forgive me, grace. the truth will come out soon enough, but we can pretend as long as we’re here, as long as it’s the two of us.
you are all over your own frequency. highs and lows. long exhales that roll your lungs along your ribs. i trill occasionally, a reassurance and a reminder to myself that as far as you’re concerned, i am doing this for you. working my hands into the plane of your dorsum as if i may mold it. it’s a little painful, you said, but that’s good — that’s part of it. you and pain. i know you lie to me about how much of it humans carry through life.
so i shouldn’t take your word for it, should i?
well, i am a selfish thing.
