noctural remissions

Abandoning sheets and a three-decades-old quilt, waking with grease in folds of flesh, smearing memories of dreams into a Petri dish. Not one virgin kleenex within reach, back of hand is an understudy. Erstwhile Libran lover with my hands fades after blossoming, a midnight migraine. Why was your face framed in grey-shot black, a diminutive satyr? You've always stood taller than I with wheat-gold waterfalls. You didn't even laugh. Your mouth closed against mine. My mouth closed against yours.

Try living with feigned apathy. Histrionics and half-gasps make lustier bedfellows.

Bones pop and joints refuse to loosen. For that, you shoot the rapids in a one-man vessel. Steady stroke and rigid tendons, shallow breath determination, aiming for the cataract a million miles hence. Arms windmill, legs clamped against one another. Far away at home before disturbed bedclothes, before crawling from the empty womb, fingers bury into cleft. Urgent scrabbling and arched back. Stuffing fist into face, facing the ceiling, fistfuls of chasteless implacable need.

Dramatis personae, indeed.