In Blume

Jesus. Her hands are around my throat again. They're tight and my windpipe is wilting. I don't struggle. I can't seem to take my eyes off hers; cold cobalt in scorched tarmacadam. She's foaming at the mouth and a dehydrated rabid spittle has formed at the corners of her lips and it falls on me sporadically, sticking to my lashes and casting a strange haze to my vision.

Stars and spots are errupting now as my lover murders me to the sound of cherry blossoms at midnight.

I drop my left hip and let her weight tilt over to the edge of the bed. She's too drunk to notice and before the next fleck of spittle has time to leave her wolverine mouth, her back has slammed into the floor and I've landed on top of her.

The wind has been knocked from her and her eyes are floating in her skull like raw egg yolk and I grind my forehead into hers and snarl in her face until she's yelping like a wounded dog in the street.

She brings up tired hands and takes fearful rakes of half chewed nervous claws down my cheeks and neck. But there's no feeling now other than the primal rage of love soaked violence. I want to shatter her face and feel her teeth sink into my knuckles. I want to batter her. Instead I take aim at the shiny pocket of linoleum between her ear and the nook of her shoulder. I bury my fist into it and the roar of hot pain up my wrist is an orgasmic release.

I wind it up again and her face has contorted into a pool of dread and I think she's screaming but all I can hear is the linoleum churning my fist into butter. And I hate that I'm here and I hate that I love her and I hate that we can't stop and I hate that I've become a reality that only exists on the lips of neighboured gossip.

The linoleum mirrors a bloodied reflection of my face, bloated with fear and booze and I take on a new relish and pummel the face of this man I used to respect.