here - Jersey Devil Press

I never sat on top of another washing machine, but every time I
kissed the boy, my face would go numb, and stay numb until he
talked to me again, sometimes days later, sometimes weeks, and I
followed him out to California after one night of gin and pineapple
juice. He got me pregnant, a little, and Gatsby was there inside the
fetus, face blown up like a globe, whispering into all the murky
waters that run inside a woman. “Is this what you want, old
sport?”
But like I said, it was only a little pregnant, and afterwards
Gatsby was there in the blood too. He filtered the drops through his
exquisite silk shirts. “Was this the baby? Was it this one? Which one
of these contains the thing you want?” Oh I was a hurricane all
right. No one tells you how much iron is in blood, or else mine was
polluted by the rusty spring. Everything tasted like metal for a
year.
Afterwards I saw the boy naked one more time. I tore off his
shirt and used my foxteeth to nip the tops off those pimples, trying
to drink out what’s inside of him, Gatsby’s face carnival-reflected in
every squelch of pus. “I don’t think we should see each other
anymore,” he said. It was either Gatsby or the boy. I find it harder
and harder to tell voices apart.
I moved three thousand miles away and paid electric bills and
worked as a receptionist and spent the lurches in my morning
commute watching tiny urban mice running between the subway
rails. I adopted a dog, a rescued Doberman, the exact color of a
melted milk dud, and named him Gatsby. He weighs down the
mattress in the night, makes me slide toward him in my sleep. First
thing in the morning, I feel so protected I don’t want anyone else
around. It is too hot in me to hold another person.
My spring is still rewired and rusty and I ache with want but
we can never let anyone else into our bed. We’d rip his throat out,
me and Gatsby. We’d rip his throat out and we’d play catch with it
and then it would just be us again, a team of two.
December 2011 29