Words: Tara Jackson (she/her)
His skin his lips his flesh tinted gold. She touches every part of him in her mind. Their heads leaning against the wall. Occupying separate space together and togetherness separately, they begin to drift like fog beside the floral mouldings. He senses something inside her, gazes at her chewed fingernails. Once we were both children falling asleep in bed at the same time, isn’t that funny? Very funny. Our mothers were tucking us up in different rooms, imagining who we would become. My dad tucked me in. I didn’t know you existed and you didn’t know I did. Maybe I knew, somehow. How? You were faceless, but you were always there. He pinches her little toe. Here? No no no she giggles and retracts the foot. What about here? He strokes her earlobe and decides it is the softest part of her entire body. He can feel her wanting more more more as she continues to giggle away. She looks up into his eyes and sees herself reflected back. She is not alone there. Mother says we are never alone. God is in everything. God is in the floral mouldings. He is in the rose. But god doesn’t know how she rises now, how the warm honey of his eyes flows through her veins and inebriates her soul. O Heavenly Father. She licks his chest and luxuriates in the oddness of it all. He glides his hand across her chin her neck her shoulder. Where? She doesn’t want to answer because then he might stop. If he stops then I will stop dreaming and there won’t be any god. Do you love me? I think I love you more than I love myself. When I’m with you I don’t feel scared about the future. Neither do I. And all those things we are all supposed to be doing all the time don’t matter when we have each other. When we have each other. It’s like there’s a closeness between us I have never felt with another person, ever. Not even god? God might be a part of it … if god is the same as dreaming. He reaches for the scrunchie on her wrist and gently ties up her hair, loose bronze strands spilling out like slivers of light. The gesture restores her. I know. He journeys along her trembling stomach and arrives at the navel. I’m here. He wants to undo the knot and crawl inside there, like he crawled beneath the sheets after his mother said goodnight. He wants to curl up into himself, slink past time and sink into the softness of her flesh. He whispers something to her and puts his ear to her belly. He feels real. They feel united. She thinks how nice it would be if a part of him really were a part of her. Together always, forever indulging in one another. She places her hand on his back and feels his curved spine, his flesh hard as bone and wet with sweat, wishing dreaming believing she could waft through him like a breeze. They continued to float together in the late September sun. Winter was a world away. He listened and listened. She held her breath. The room was silent.
