momentous barters

This is so exhausting, but obligatory. I am a marionette of limp limbs and long hair trapped beneath my shoulder blades. It’s not enough for them to enjoy it, I must enjoy it too. Or at least appear to. I breathe on rhythm because I know they like it. Arch your bones, close your eyes, part your lips, moan, smile, bite. Sometimes they will tell you what to do, will annotate your body into the shape they desire. Always impossible contortions, but you just do your best and wait.

This the price for your moment. The moment when heavy-lidded eyes meet, and breath intertwines and your blood turns into quicksand. Its gentle and intimate, maybe a callused finger on your cheeks or a quivering part of your hair. The first kiss is perfect, always, and you live there, in the stained glass behind your eyelids and they will never hold more reverence for you than in that kiss. They will never need you, love you, give you more. In that moment of touch, you are the mother, the partner, the wife, the widow, the child.

And in a heartbeat, your moment is gone. You disappear.

D took me in the dark with the screams of his music thrumming in my teeth. I’m on my back, legs bent forward, my chin pinned back by his squatty fingers, exposing my bare neck. Are my eyes open or closed? It does not matter, the room is so dark I can’t see his face, only feel the slick, sweaty pressure of his huge body over mine. My shirt is not quite off but tangled at my collarbone. My underwear and jeans are gone, but my socks are still on, sliding across the duvet in little whispers: Shoosh, shoosh, shoosh.

R took me in the light, told me to stay still, he would take off my clothes. And he did, with delicate fingers and little smacks of his lips when my buttons snagged. His hair was gelled so stiff that I had to place my fingers on the back of his neck to find flexible stubble. My heart was beating slowly, rhythmically as he kissed the outside of my underwear, the effect of consuming so much THC. I had to burp so badly, the quickly downed beers bubbling in my throat, but I repressed them with desperate swallows. I had to be palatable.

D scooched me with his body from one side of his moms’ bed to the other, my neck extended like a corpse in rigor mortis. It must have been laborious for him, like pushing a fallen tree, and the veins of his arms were protruding while sweat dripped from him to me. I licked a droplet from my lower lip. When he finally came, he collapsed onto me with such force my ribs quaked and I gasped, slapping at his back with tingling fingers. It took me a moment to realize my hands were numb.

R devoured me like a delicate fruit and then wrang me out like a wet towel. His penis was so small it was difficult to discern the skin that was touching me, rubbing me raw, chipping at my organs.

My soul is not here. It is trapped in the whisps of breath we took over the coffee table with hesitant smiles, humming into each other’s mouth. This is my body, bent and broken with scars like teardrops down my stomach and thighs.

R tried to cradle me. “It’s a whole-body thing,” he explained, like I would know what the hell that meant. But his hands felt like tentacles on my breasts, otherworldly and wrong, an act to taboo to tolerate. I wanted to lean my head on his chest and ask him if he loves me. I wanted him to let me cry into his t-shirt while he whispered, “Yes, baby, I love you,” and made cooing noises into my hair.

I woke up next to D on the floor, feeling inside out. His fingers were inside me. “I see the problem,” he told me, and I felt fear at his sallow and hungry face, “Little bit tight, aren’t we?” I looked down at my stale body, expecting to see exposed meat and bones, but instead see my bare thighs covered in puke.

“I want to put it in your ass,” whispered G, as I squealed and tried to squirm away.

J lay atop me in a field until truck headlights shone upon us and I rolled away into the tall grass.

L told me not to go so deep.

E told me to go deeper.

I want to scream my repentance because I mean it, but I would give it all again. I would give every inch of my skin and hair to flames for the twinkling instant of connection when I can be thoroughly treasured.