—I’M LEARNING TO LOVE THE MISERY

 

 

Dinner

 

I let him take me, this hairless cloud, just this one time, I said to myself. He kissed me unarmed, so sweet and deft, and disrobed me like a magician with shifty silk gloves. The ceiling looked like whipped cream that had been left to dry, a lightning crack over one foam-hardened swell. I noticed other things, like the murky bedroom windows, like the batwing-beats of his breath, how urgent and sweaty they sounded, which made me picture him as a youth, running hurdles in track, dreaming of the Olympics and believing the impossible. When it was finished, I tapped nails, listening for his parakeets, but heard his mother instead, calling him to dinner, saying it was cold again, right there on the plate where she’d left it the day before.