Bodies In Motion

He gives me flowers before he kisses me, blue flowers and a blue kiss. I don’t know why I let him do it. I am not interested in him in that way, not any longer, or in any way actually. Perhaps he has put something in my tea, a powder dissolved from the flowers he presents to me, some rare petals grown from dust and spiderwebs.

Later, we take BART under and through the city, riding nowhere in particular. He wants to stop and go up into the sunshine, but I want to stay below ground and in motion. I don’t like the feeling of permanence that stopping brings. I want to remain fluid.

Seeing him was Bez’s idea, and I only agreed because I do everything Bez asks of me. I don’t know why she thinks this is a good idea. Sometimes her thoughts are like a long-dead language to me, thick and heavy and inscrutable, with no translation to be found.

He no longer has a key to me, and I don’t know what the purpose is in allowing him to think that he might find a way to pick my locks and come inside me again.

The earrings he gave me have long since vanished into the darker corners of my house, out of my sight and nearly out of my mind. Perhaps the tiger has swallowed them.

“I see the line on your forehead,” Nikola asks, his Serbian accent heavy as cream. “What is it you are thinking?”

I don’t answer him.

Perhaps the tiger will swallow him as well.