Revisiting old safety. |
The drought was over; rain poured its velveteen sheets past her window, and clouds hid lush, green mountains from view. Cars sizzled below, staticky, like a dead television screen, while naked I crouched at the sill, looking out, hearing behind me her bare feet rasp across even more barren tatami. It’d been too long. We drank water to refresh, kissed furtively to remind. The awkwardness of confused feelings and the unwillingness to reach beyond ourselves drunkened me, making light my steps towards home. Headphones pierced the gauze of reverie: “Just the gentle art of making enemies.” Smile, bow, smile again At the elderly Nipponese startling up at me, too surprised for a moment to look away. But I didn’t mind. I was feeling good beneath my umbrella of habit, remembering how, like a nun robed I’d prayed between those long, luscious legs pointing neither towards heaven nor hell. On the other side of the world, something like disappointment fell from the sky, but the memory of her orgasm--pure, angelic--called me, hailed me, as I sleepwalked across concrete dune seas. Oh, that rain and that polyurethane smile, sheathed me, made me…perhaps even kept me…safe. In that gray palace of destruction, the sun has long since risen, and I would birth no children—not yet, you see: the label on her condoms could've read: “Made in Japan was I.” |