I’ve always loved a magic trick. Especially cards. You can have endless fun with those. I’d love for you to teach me the one where you guess the card I’m holding by looking into my eyes. closely. For a very. long. time. Here. Let me practice some more. On that bench there. But you always preferred to perform bigger and louder tricks. On stages. With audiences. And sometimes daggers. Your most notable one? To disappear completely.

a thirst for trust

Under the willow tree, this little fish can breathe out of water. I sip on a cider and wonder when he leaves today with the empty bottles if he’ll ever come back with another.
And so there’s a rhythm to my heart at the moment, opening and closing like tired gills.
Opening with a calm pool of patience, when arms wrap around me and the sudden safety, the deep comfort, the belly of a double bass is teasing.
Closing with my lips pushed on yet another strangers when his kiss is a barely there, eyes over there, he could be anywhere type of revelation.
It’s a smack then a sigh, a hollow and a high.
And though the wind through the branches is a sweet lullaby as I stay awake, licking my fins, listening for his returning footsteps on the moist grass, I do hope he arrives with crates of apples. With time to sit with me discussing the fresh bubbles that will slither down our thirsty throats and the sweetness on our tongues as we watch them ferment together.

honestly

The truth is that it isn’t. Words can’t carry truth, because it twists and contorts at lightening speed and neither a black or gold heart will ever truly sing it. And sometimes life’s just too short or too long to second guess a smile.

fine and mellow now please

My silly anxious pit would like to make me curl up today inside myself where I don’t speak and I don’t need to answer. If there’s the urge for words, I can learn a new French one – a bout de souffle (breathless) - and make it my new favourite. I could take the big mug and sip on hot honeyed milk, then hurt my teeth, sinking them into a cold magnum ice cream. There’s a button to press play for characters to come alive on a screen. They could be in the south of France. She could wear jeans really well, and, … and, …and he could tell his friend about her smile that kills him so. They could kiss to the soundtrack of my coco pops, pop poppety pop smack, swilling in my bowl while I sink into the cloud bed and imagine it to be more like this:

obnoxious anxious

There’s a pit
in the bottom
of my stomach
where a tired
ol beastie
growls
when he yawns.
He’s
a strong arm
strong coffee
coughing
on caffeine
and pulls the reins
hard
on my jaw
with a paw
full of scratchy things
he sings
like a roar
and makes me clench
the bench
under the sky
full of storm
that was only just blue
before
in his room
doom
is the only shade
of bright
from this belly fire
I might
have to look
to the wind
for guidance
you see
perhaps if I sat
by the mango tree
could it smell like the sea?
my feet free
of shoes
and my toes
remembering the grass
my fingers
can dig away
and clutch at the dirt
the hurt
this shirt’s
hard to button
with these dirty
fingers
that shake
when it wakes
this tired ol’ beastie
when it stirs
in my tummy
funny
how he knows
oh
with his weight
and that sneer
but I’ll kick
him back good
with a trick
or three
a paper aeroplane
a popsicle and tea
under the tree
of the fruit
with the stones
we’ll stone him
with those
and glue him
with the juice
the syrup
to shuttup
and leave me
alone

bedtime stories

You sleep too much she says as he wipes the crumbs out of his eyes.
She didn’t understand the feathered doona offered him a feathered reality. He shuffled out of the sheets and into the late morning sun, blinking away the rays with the remnants of an all enveloping dream. He’d have gladly curled up a little longer like a hurt and wriggling worm in the belly of a dark numbness, but scratching the dog good morning behind the ears seemed like a stronger, manlier thing to do.
___________________________________________________________________
We stretch out on the Sunday sun canvas of your bed and paint the ceiling of your room with crayons that we have attached to long sticks, so that reaching up doesn’t jeopardize the position my hip is in laying next to yours. We’ve drawn a pathway between trees and a river that I can almost hear. You blink away specks of light traveling up and up in your eyes with each blink.Little fluoro diamonds. And you ask me where I think the helium balloons go when tired fingers release their strings.
Anywhere you want them to go darling, I say. Anywhere you want.
___________________________________________________________________

He took her milk wrists with the young veins and pinned them to the bed. She dug her nails into her palms until they bled red ribbons into the white sheet creases. Looking down at them as he nuzzled her raw with a gravel beard, she thought of them as baby whales being harpooned. She wondered if there was a ship over that crease there, that little big wave, just around the corner coming to rescue her, but as he reached right up to her wet little mouth and blew a cloud of smoke through her lips and his wheezing made the bed tremble and the sheets, the sheets, the waves were getting higher until she felt herself sink in them and knew they’d all be swallowed up under the force of his storm.

control the brakes or go skidding into it all

I punch the walls in the shower with a lame fist.
I’d love to give it a proper go, but I’m a little embarrassed.
Even in front of myself.
So instead,
I write an affirmation on the steamed up shower screen with trembling wet fingers,
like stiff little ghosts.
Keep the drama under wraps.
Keep the drama under wraps.
Smile.
But you see,
it’d be so much easier to be your own puppeteer
if your limbs didn’t always get caught in the strings.

milk, bread, toothpaste, 12.15 meeting in boardroom

The sun is getting up earlier and stronger each day. I vow to try and keep up with her.

Parties are making me sad. Hearing about the ones I left early is making me sadder.

My fingers are stiff playing the f-chord on my guitar. I still sing to myself though, even though there’s always a missed beat until my hand has placed itself on the strings correctly. I don’t think I’ll let you hear it just yet.

The best and equally worst text message depending on the sender is ‘I’m at your door’

My friend said she thought I was the funniest person she's ever met today. I liked that.

I have a wonderful and never-souring relationship with my bed.

I don’t understand why bartenders always put a straw in my drink. I hate straws. What a fucking waste.

I’m thinking of adopting a pet rabbit. A big fat fluffy one with lop ears that I will let lose in my apartment and talk to all the while doing house chores. Perhaps I’ll call it Elvis.

It would be funny to cause havoc in a supermarket. If I ever went insane, I think that’s where I’d do it. I’d build a fort out of the toilet paper, use avocados for war paint, squirt tomato sauce on shoppers and tell them they’re hit, lay banana peels down one aisle, pour a litre of milk into a whole box of rice bubbles and pretend the snap crackle and pop were the enemy approaching with their guns and wave a plastic bag as a white flag when I’m ready for them to take me away.

I didn’t run for the flashing green light crossing the street to work today because the song on my ipod was good.

My friends are so happy. I love them so much. I’m so quiet. I think I’ll go home.

I think I’ll die my hair blonde tonight. I’m pretty sure I’ll decide on dark brown instead.

I had $4.50 left in my wallet yesterday. I spent $4.- on daffodils on the walk home.

I still miss you.

drink

I wanted to tell you so badly today. I wanted to tell you instead of writing it at 2am in a bar on my own. I wanted to tell you about the past. How it visited me this week and how it slid off my back. That I myself seemed to be water off my own back and it terrified me that I couldn’t get a grip into my own spine. That the worse things got the more I laughed. I wanted to tell you about the gig tonight. About how talented those young kids were and how distant I felt from it all. About the drunk guys hand on my right bottom cheek and the girls hand on the left. I wanted to tell you everything. Again and again. Like a rehearsal. Until you knew it. Until you knew me. I wanted to explain to you that seeing you today made it hard for me to walk. That you’re the only thing that makes my heart beat waiver. That I want to fuck myself up so badly right now but that seeing you unwell hurts me more. That I wanted to look after you and tell you you were the most beautiful man on earth. Again and again. I wanted to curl up behind you while you were sleeping tonight, my cheek against your back, listening to you breathing, the safest sound in the world, tighten myself into the smallest ball and whisper into your ear that I got so drunk that I couldn’t spell the word future and that for the first time that made it seem like somewhere I wanted to go.

just like poker

You know that game with the battleships on paper? Where you have to try and guess where the other persons ships are and give them the coordinates to sink them? B4, D12 and so on.
I wonder how long you can fool your opponent, when all yours were hit and sank years ago.

it's goddamn marvelous

she skips across the field
hair aflutter and silent heart
legs all springy
and she delights
in her feet
kicking off the heads
of those yellow flowers
hoping they’d all gang up
into a yellow headed war
against her knocked up knees
as she crawls
and trawls
through the tall grass
in search of a burrow
in wait of a scavenger
a deathly creature
a thin starving thing
to sink its teeth
and make her feel
any-fucking-thing

the rorschach test

She coughed up ink.
It splattered from her mouth
onto a piece of paper.
People gathered around to watch.
They took the sheet,
turned it this way and that
trying to decipher
the mess from her insides.
They folded it in half
reopened it
and all took turns
to make sense of the inkblot.
She started choking on the dark fluid.
It wouldn’t stop pouring from her.
She gasped for air,
She pulled out her hair,
As they walked off and left her there.
She drew her last breath
before drowning in her inky sea.
A man raced back
with the paper in his hand.
He was a minute too late
as he read aloud
mighty proud,
the word ‘loneliness’
to her washed up fate.

faster, faster

I didn’t talk to anyone at work today.
I counted the number of telephone rings on each call until people gave in and hung up. If they left a message I would either email them back a few hours later or just ignore it. I only dropped things into the boss’ office when I knew he was on the phone so he couldn’t stop me to ask anything. It always makes me grit my teeth when he takes too long to finish a sentence and inside I’m saying ‘c’mon, c’mon’ and it sounds bizarre because I even hear myself think it through clenched jaws. I did make a cup of tea and a few colleagues said hello, but luckily they were quite busy, so it was o.k. for me to just smile and tilt my head in acknowledgement. These silences suit me just fine. It’s the ones when I’m out of the office that I’m trying to manage better. I want to want them more.
When I was a child I went riding on a horse. The first time it galloped, I panicked. I felt so out of control and I was so little and my arms weren’t very strong and it just sort of took off with me you know. I started to get a little scared. But then after a while, I tricked myself pretty good. I made myself believe that I actually wanted it to go faster and that this rattling around was really nothing. The funny thing is, I began to lean forward, into the wind and I started to enjoy the rhythm and the cutting of the air and how my skin felt in it. My heart rate slowed down and all of a sudden I really did want it to go faster. All of me did.
That is what I’m trying to do now. See, if I convince myself that I actually want to be alone and free, my heart rate might slow down again and it won’t be such a struggle anymore and I’ll be happy and I won’t even think about you anymore and when you see me in a café or on the street, you’ll wonder at my confidence and independence and that grace I’ll be exuding will drive you insane. You’ll want to be close to me so badly, but I won’t answer your calls.
I’ll just be counting the number of rings before you give in and hang up.

adventures from an office chair

Let’s get out of this town. Pick a direction and let’s drive. We can pick up a scruffy stray at the lost dogs home (shall we call him Reginald?) and stick our heads out the open car window with him, tongue lose into the great unknown at a speed that makes our stomachs giddy. Turn the volume up on the car radio and sing along at the top of your lungs with me, because I’m burning baby, I’m bubbling over, can’t you feel my heat?
I’m tired of high end suits, high heels, high ambitions, high tea, high rises, high and mighty lies, highly strung executives being high on drugs and power. It’s high time. I’d much rather be high on life, see the high tide roll in on angry waves while you and I recline on sandy banks feeling the sun set on our skin and the horizon while we are waited on by a walrus butler in a waistcoat and monocle. We can get drunk on the breeze, raindrops in empty fields and strangers lips. And perhaps, we just might, in this world of bouncing clouds, knee high grass, tree choirs, river lullabies, bare feet, fresh bread, sneek-a-peek sunrays, stories and laughter with our racing open hearts, find ourselves whilst getting lost.

nice day for a sulk

It’s cold out today. I nuzzle into my shawl stepping out of the door in the morning, pick up a coffee and walk to work. My breath creates little ghosts in the air and I imagine them going on a journey. This one here in front of the green grocers as I smile hello, it picks up fruit to bake a delicious surprise for its other ghost friends, sitting around a cloud in the sky. This one smacks its head into the phone booth before calling a lover it fought with the night before. I can hear its whispers behind me as I stride on. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry”. And in its tone I can hear the ache it must feel as if its stomach was turned upside down. And this one, this one here, it browses the antiques in the store. It hovers over pirates chests, remembers the souls that sat in the chairs from when it too was a body of flesh and bones and it giggles as it pulls out old records, wishing it could show his buddy, the one that escaped from my mouth to the pub to drown a little sorrow.
At work, I turn the heater on and rub my hands. My ghosts have disappeared and I feel so lonely and the clock on the wall, it’s standing still. I wish it’d do something more joyful, like skipping, or bouncing, but standing is what it will. I text a friend, I know who’ll understand. “I want to paint the town red, I want to see it bleed”. All so I can fall into bed exhausted and dream and join my ghosts around the cloud in the sky and share the cake and maybe feel less lonely too.

in my street

Tessa shuffles in boots with teapot from the counter
with the pretty waitress
to the high chair by the window
with the pretty sunshine.
She’s always seeking
a high seat to perch on,
something comforting
about her feet dangling free perhaps,
unable to reach the ground.
The café is busy
with jostling cups,
clitter-clatter cutlery,
movement and chattery
and plenty of noise to hide away in.
People kiss cheeks and whisper gossip snippets
that grow wings
and find her ears.
Words travel up and over
the pages of her book,
mingling with the sentences before her
and she’s swilling around
in alphabet soup,
though none of the voices manage to drown out
the one in her head.
‘Fool.
You silly fool’.
It’s a day only a long shower,
Dad’s oversized striped pyjamas
and the words ‘fuck off’ can fix.
The shower finds her as soon as she steps outside.
Rain gushes and swills at her feet.
She grins as she cocks back her head
and lets it wash the hardness of the day off her face
in tiny rivers
that snake
and cling with her hair
like sticky honey.
Her dress,
a little sponge of flowers
that drink
and drink
and drink.
Umbrellas in primary colours spurt up around her
like giant neon mushrooms
and a car accelerates through a growing puddle,
like a belly of a ship,
splashing it up and drenching her entirely.
There’s a guy next to her.
Wet slacks
and brown-browed frowns
and curled down lips
that yell
and scoff.
‘Fuck off’,
he wishes to the automobile prancer.
She glances across at him,
in all her dripping little flotsam,
all dance-eyed,
happy sighed,
wonders at his anger
and thinks,
Fool.
You silly fool.

zodiac element: water

Water I

It had been an afternoon of sun rays
and thirsty skin
until the rain hit hard.
Her heart had been beating faster the last few days
and the thick drops falling on her mouth
as she let her head fall back seemed to calm her down.
He had been watching her,
standing there with her arms outstretched,
her hair
sticking in streams to her face
like dark honey
and her dress
clinging to her body
as she let it soak through.
He walked out under the pouring sky
to meet her skin.
His tongue traced
lost drops on her lips
as she opened her eyes
and blinked away the blur.
Oh, he knew her well.
He picked her up like a china doll,
carried her out of the wet,
waltzed her in the door of her apartment
and didn’t untangle his fist from her thick hair
until it had dried into
a tight
neat
curl.

Water II

She thought she heard the clouds break open
behind her
as she walked
a 2am stretch
back home.
But as she turned around to face the roll,
it was simply a cat
jumping out of a garbage bin
and her paws
pitter-pattered her
to her street
like raindrops
for company.

Water III

I like it here,
under your sea.
Floating on my back,
seaweed fingers tickling my spine
in your all enveloping love.
I am so weightless
and my skin welcomes the cool.
Above me the sky is loud.
Sunlight,
shining bright,
tries to break the surface.
Dancing all around me are fallen stars,
tired of the sky’s demands,
seeking refuge in this here wonderland.
Some of them
caress my skin on their way,
hide under my drifting body,
exhaling in relief.
The silence is a trusting soul,
a whale’s breath
embracing me with all its life.
Dear dark,
dear deep,
dear still and silent sea,
let me rest here a while longer,
until a fishing hook snears me
and pulls me back up to air.

Water IV

The lake just dried out one summer.
Water levels lowered and faded
until it was nothing more than a muddy pulp.
She watched them disintegrate all around her.
Her fellow fish friends.
Their scales grew thirstier than bones
and storms became storms of dust.
Some of them,
they flapped their fins
like birds
with broken wings.
It was painful to watch.
Some were clever
and grew limbs
and feet.
They walked out of the crater
in brave search of a new paradise.
Of a clear glacier fed pool
under a merciful sun.
She wiggled and dug herself in deeper
into the cool slug,
slowed down her breathing
and waited.
Pregnant clouds would surely find her in time,
or the earth would split beneath her
and she’d drop down to its depth
and slip into a wetness beyond.

Water V

A shower is a great place to cry
as is the rain
or the swimming pool up the road
or anywhere else
that caresses cheeks
mingles with your salt
and cries along with you too

Water VI

My dog grabs the leash behind the kitchen door before I can and it trails behind him in the wind as he flies out through the front garden while I check for keys in pockets and push fingers into mittens.
The sea breeze tickles my nose
and I sneeze
as I catch up with him.
By the time our legs hit the shore
we have exercised ourselves warm
and we exhale bigger
and bigger
clouds into the crisp air.
The beach is completely deserted
and my skin pulls over my face tight
and rosy cheeked
and almost hurts from smiling.
I take off my shoes and socks
and roll up denim hems to reach my knees.
The sky is wide open,
the sea angry
and wild
as we run together along the shoreline,
chasing waves up and down the sandy banks.
And I can hear her breathing,
the sea,
in
and out,
adrift
and her heart
is pounding
and as free
and screaming
as mine.

through the holes in your souls

He always thought
her eyes
mirrored water
forever on the move
and deep
so deep
it terrified him
in her dark depths

She thought
his blew through her
like the air
winter air
cold and fleeting
almost
as if
they didn’t
want to be trapped
where
nothing grew
either

so
he held his breath
and she pulled
her shawl
around her throat
for warmth
and together
they both
fell victim
to the elements

Build that wall

She could sense his lips across the table, slightly parted through concentration and her fingers itched to meet his skin. She was confident all the way up until those few words a moment ago. They’d felt like a kick to the stomach leaving her bleeding internally. It was like she was drunk. Her lips disengaged from her clever mind which come to think of it didn’t feel so clever today at all. She tried to reason with her nerves, which snaked like veins, grew thick with poison. They crawled and crept, they flickered over and down her eyelids, they anchored into her stomach, built roots on her intestines. They took advantage of her open heart, her tongue hostage and held her thoughts ransom. She wished she could pull them out of her insides like giant noodles. The realization that they were part of her, indeed born of her made her scoff. No foreign planted seedling. No cruel persons spell. Just her heart and souls black toffee, their soot and grime left over from their busy working selves. So she leaned back over her notepad. Thought she could disguise her ways, that if she poured it out through ink on paper, he’d understand, move his chair a little closer and put his arms around her instead.

it's just that...

When I met him my voice carried forth so much promise. It flowed, this healthy river with fish jumping excitedly, bursting with stories and laughter. It was deep and rather rich with juicy algae in the depths to swim down to and entangle himself in if he wished. We traveled. We traveled fast. His tongue would come and taste the wet on mine and the spark in his eyes caught the light bouncing off the rippling streams. I could see us arriving at sea together, soaked in adventures and drenched in embrace and fingers and skin and lips,
oh,
his lips.
But as he sat me down to tell me we were traveling on different currents, we were both surprised at how I’d suddenly turned quiet. At how my sentences seemed broken and resembled a mere trickle and at how quickly I ran out of water, drying out and all the fish that had leaped too soon found themselves stranded in mud and gasping for air.

happiness is a glass of red on a school night

A Coonawarra Cabernet
tickling the nose
with a label of prose
swilling
in balloon glasses
to Billie Holiday
making
the tightest of friends
with her velvet mouth
and thirsty tongue.
A clockwise turn
of the volume dial,
a well rehearsed swing
of her wrist
to her hip
a few square metres
of privacy home
she could call her own
even if renting meant
blue tac
instead of
nail peppered walls
A flung shoe
A ripped off belt
and fling that too
a private lap dance
for the sturdy
tall
leather clad
chair in the house
a slip of a fine and dainty strap
down a shimmying shoulder
a roll down
of the stay-ups-no-more
the close echo of a belly laugh
that squeezed eyes like lemons
and drew tears like wind
with a dear friend
who’d bend
in delicious cackle agony
a full moon
spilling chalk paths
through midnight velvet sky

She held all that between her fingertips,
like green peas,
all bursty
and envy-green.
On Tuesday night
she decided to mash them all
into her creamed nutmeg sprinkled potatoes

And woke up the next day

with a nasty hangover

the rooster moans and the cleaning lady is left with ashes

The road stretches out onto an endless desert horizon that tugs me along, lassoos me into its unknown. I crossed the border into Mexico just over an hour ago. The windows in my car are wound down but offer me little relief from the dusty heat. My mouth resembles the dry, barren landscape you are standing in when I pull up next to you. You’re thin, like a shadow dried up in this here desolation. Your boot treads on your cigarette butt as you move towards me. My legs shift on the leather seat, unsticking themselves and I can feel your fire from here.
—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—--
We drink tequila from dirty glasses and lower them back on to a wet bar. The man behind it smirks at us and refills them. He has bad body odor and a dog he doesn’t treat well. Your hair hangs in greasy strands over your eyes and drives me crazy. My fingers itch to wipe it out of your face, then find a place to tangle themselves in it. I picture myself as a cat licking it back behind your ears until my tongue is raw and seeking your lips for healing. You sit close, pinning your eyes on me and you rarely blink. It’s making me giddy, slightly dizzy, tipsy even. But it could be just the heat. Every word we speak carries this intangible weight, that leaves me feeling exhausted as if I were learning my language entirely anew. It’s dark and there is no cool breeze. We wet our gums some more and perspire small translucent beads that drip drop off our cheeks as we shake when we laugh the way we do.
-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-
You take me without pardon, I lay in your reins and when we slow down I read the history in your scars. The room seems caught in explosion with a staggering heat that drips off us, soaks the sheets and clouds the air. I want to drink you in. You drink from me, I can feel us drowning.
—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-——-
In the morning you shave with my blunt razor and hotel soap in the shower.
You say the water is scorching you while my heart is burning, a fistful of love to the stomach.
We are moths.
The flames slave.

And we both go up in them.

buzzing night bees

She’s awake at 3.52am
with yesterdays mouth and tomorrows eyes.
The blinds give way to velvet and silence.
The streets are inky
and the moon always lunatic
like her hair that danced the tossing turning dance with her pillow.
She lures the neighbours cat into her apartment
and teaches it a new name.
Sam.
Sam looks up at her.
Long-whiskered,
stripey-tailed,
silverbullet furry ball at her feet.
They share some triple cream brie.
Hot flushed skin and cotton knickers
meet the cold seat of the kitchen stool
and she pours herself a glass of wine
to toast to the bowl of full cream milk
she’s set on the linoleum floor.
They talk.
She mutters her words through fingertips into thick fur
Kneading in questions.
Petting in secrets.
And Sam, he purrs back his clever answers.
Universal truths.
Wisdom and knowledge,
in exchange for dairy offerings.
He slinks in figures of eight
like a slow toy train
against her ankles and woolly socks
before disembarking on trash can journeys
in black night alleys
and will make sure to serenade her awake
for another secret rendezvous soon.

and when it rains, I’ll run for cover under the oldest house with the loudest roof

The ship sank deep when it came off the tracks of the waves.
Just days before, she’d climbed on board his shoulders when his smile offered itself as a safe platform to step onto. They’d danced along the floorboards, as the belly of his boat slithered through caterpillar mangroves, past houses with held in whispers that hung like crooked teeth on slopes. The sea seemed so lazy, so she took off her shoes and sank into his muscles. She looked up at the grey sky in their eyes, unalarmed and was pleased she could smell the rain approaching. His lips always tasted better through it. The coffee in her mug grew cold and bitter as he turned his back on her, so she stumbled over the piled up baggage in the aisle to see out the window on the other side what could be causing it. It looked like winter. The rain had slowed and frozen into snow. She wasn’t afraid. She always understood where autumn went and why it came back, but he never did. Turn back that is. She could see now that his fingers were webbed and he was breathing through gills. The wind rushed up her bare legs as she stood there in his striped shirt and her feet felt soggy. She looked down at her toes, willing them to be fins.
She should have known better than to board a boat of paper, but she loved the feeling of drowning too much.

Blue-white underpants

His smell still lingered in the rooms. It clung to her body, all needy, no matter how wide she opened the windows. No matter how many times she lost herself in the shower.
The sun promised a fresh start this morning as it streamed through matted hair and dried the water droplets off her skin as she stood on cool bathroom tiles. The warmth tickled her nipples gently the way his breath sometimes would.
She folded yesterdays washing, including two pairs of his underwear and that T-shirt that always pinched a little across his chest.
She took a deep breath as she thought back to when they’d stretched out under a candy sky with bare toes like little piglets, muddy and squealing in delight as their owners lips found a million ways to move and fascinate.
Before they moved in angry lines. Before they trembled. Before tears mixed with spittle on their shaky platforms.
She held out his boxer briefs, all stiff to the touch from the sun and climbed into them. Wrapped them around at her waist and secured them with a bobby pin. She would allow herself this just for today while she used the other pair to scrub the floors and scour every last scent, dust and doubt away.