—THIS COULD TAKE US ALL NIGHT LONG

 

Akimbo

 

She is my brother’s girl, both of them six years older, but tonight he’s drank too much again, passed out akimbo on top of a splintered coffee table, his knuckles torn and bloody.

She takes my hand. Hers feels warm, supple, the way I imagine a newborn seal might. 

How she knows which room is mine, I can’t say, but it looks like a different space when the door opens: posters and baseball pennants pinned crooked on the wall, my football alarm clock glowing scarlet, appearing at once both comical and sinister. 

As she nudges me on the mattress, vertigo wraps itself around every one of my nerves. I spin in jagged cones, yet I notice a water spot leaching sickly-yellow across the ceiling’s belly. I notice a spider nefariously knitting in a corner. I notice everything and nothing.  

 

“I only have one rule:

To feel that I’m loved by you

and not raped for once”