forty-three

11:00:00

I'm awake in Beirut.

I run my fingers through my hair and his perfume untangles the nest that was built between the pillow and morning tongue slips. My naked wrist a nesting ground for his memory, a parcel of skin I will brush past my nose till dusk, till the yearning returns and the night blindfolds me.

We look at each other in the reflection of sunlight on the marble floor, intense and burning. Sleep still tugs on my eyelids until my blinks become closed doors and my skin receives him in compensation. How could a man be so softly dressed? A baby in a cloud shirt with bristles that prickle my cheek invite mother and mistress to the embrace. His tongue strikes a chord, his fingers seduce me with their melodious wanderings and the heat of his chest ignites a fire that I put out with my bleeding. My body, efficient and well-oiled for the chronic prospect of conception, flammable and fluent in want, diminishes behind red curtains. I don't think he'd want to paint. But I'd ravish on days like this.

His kiss is deeper and I sink further down below the elastic waistband. A wasteland of someone-said-forbidden tainted crimson, a landscape of always fresh days, a forest of billboards like pampered huggable babies pierced by javelins and lined for the public stuck in traffic. And I'm here in bed with another body that sweats, ejaculates and coughs, and the only difference is he bleeds when cut and I bleed despite it all. A scene from a biology book neatly laid out on glossy magazine paper that smells of nothing corporal. A corporate trick to make you sterile until you're nothing but a fresh breath, anti-perspiring, always fresh days, glossy, walking condom. 

Stretch. Stretch until our muscles quiver and then fall back into the trap of lethargy.

"I don't feel like going to work."

I felt like making love to you. Always.