Spring 2004, New York, New York

By Michael Boles

We are wrapped in a sheet, lying on the floor. Heat rises. Sweat forms an intricate pattern on your chest, a morning dew in your hair. It smells of gardenia.

You bring me candles every time you come, always gardenia. You said I should never know the scent of stale air, so I light them daily. It’s an artificial aroma, artificial like our life. Not a real life, like the one you have with her, with gold bands and Christmas cards.

You mumble in your waking moments. I kiss you. Your lips are a color I image being called antique plum. I trace the lines that form around your mouth as you smile. Your eyes flutter open, swamp eyes. Muddy greens with glimmers of yellow. You look first at me, then the clock. You’re always worried you’ll be missed, noticed, gone away for too long.

I try to keep you with me, but you rise. I watch your body, still tone, but sagging about the belly. Twenty-six steps to the bathroom. I move onto my stomach, can feel what you’ve left inside me. I light a cigarette, stare into the illuminated rose quartz ashtray, carelessly ash onto the floor. Your hair reminds me of a cigarette, mostly tones of gray with a hidden color beneath but not an orange hue, yours is chocolate brown. Your are like a cigarette. Never lasting long enough.

Joni Mitchell is playing, you said my generation should know Joni Mitchell, so you have it on constant rotation. “We don’t need no piece of paper from the city hall keeping us tied and true….” I finish the wine from both glasses before you return, dressed in suit and tie. You seem to be leaving.

“Tom,” I call out.

I move to you, lean in to kiss, but you move your body back so only our lips touch. It is as if you fear I’ll leave a mark. A dark stain of my chest, stomach, and penis on your clean suit. I pull you close to me.

“Billy, I have to go now,” you say, leaving.

And what can I do to keep you here with me? My old man keeping away my blues. You promised me once that you’d never make me cry. I cry each time you go, but that won’t keep you.

I stand before the steamed up mirror. I am clean of you and now regret it. I want you still to linger in the pores of my skin. I clean the mirror, stare into my own simple brown eyes. I slick back my wet hair; my hand travels through it, down the back of my neck, then around to the front. I squeeze my chest for fun, go over the ridges of by ribs, to my hips. Hips I always thought were too wide, too much like a woman’s, perfect for resting a child on.

I caress my ass and imagine you spreading me open, pushing me against the sink, and taking me. I feel your hand on my cock, stroking with the rhythm of your trust until we mutually climax. My hand goes over the small mound of my stomach. I feel something move. Not a hunger rumble, something else. The threads that connect us are fragile and I spend all my time with nimble finger, tying the broken ends back together until we are nothing but a bunch of knots. I feel it again, I feel a pulse.

Our baby is gone. I feel that he has left me as I lay on the linoleum puking out the tequila I consumed to forget you. I rub my belly, where our love would blossom, but it no longer lives there. You are gone. An iridescent dress shirt button remains on the wooden floor, but the pennies you glued to my ceiling come raining down. My heart get lost in the percussion section of this chorus of currency. You are gone.

Our baby has died still inside me. Our midday gardenia love child. You sharpened the knife and left me to do the killing. I’ll never forgive you. I rock back and forth now, wishing it all turned out differently, that we could be happy. I gave you what she could never, but still you returned to her. You, you, you … and I and baby makes three, but now it’s just I, no you. No baby. No love.

You are already upset with me for talking to your wife. You don’t understand why I have done it, I know I should tell you.

“I’m pregnant,” I say awkwardly.

“Impossible.”

“Nothing’s impossible.”

You walk in circles, stop, pace more. You are angry. We’ve made something great, something that will make us a real family, and you are angry. I remain on the floor, naked. You pick up a glass and throw it against the wall.

“This is fucked up, you know that?”

“We’re having a baby.”

The words burn you and you move toward me, pull my naked body from the floor, then throw me back down. You have never been violent. I cry. There is nothing else to do but cry at your anger, at your hatred. No, no, no, no, this was supposed to be good. It is good, you have to see that. You don’t.

“I can’t deal with this shit, these stories you make up.”

“I’m only telling you what I feel.”

I rub my belly. You laugh, slap me. Laugh again. My cheek stings; there is a greater pain. I have somehow bitten the inside of my cheek. I put two fingers in, feel the laceration, take the bloody fingers out, and charge at you. I force the fingers into your mouth, pull them out, dragging them down over your bottom lip, then make the shape of a heart on your chin.

“You’re sick,” you yell.

It was easy enough to get in touch with her. A simple matter of going through the directory of your cell phone. Felicia’s cell. I tell her what we share; she has a great deal of doubt, but agrees to meet me. I give her my address.

She is younger than I had thought. Her hair is ginger colored, slightly curly, and pulled back. She has eyes like you, but where yours are dirty green, hers are a pure green. She wears a pomegranate sweater that shows off her slim build and tiny breasts. The red is too strong of a color for her skin tone, a milk white with a careless sprinkling of freckles. She is too young to be barren. I thought she would be all tears, fragile, but no, here she is perfectly dressed and angry.

“Stay away from him,” she demands.

“He comes to me.”

“I’m his wife.”

“And I’m his lover. Your point?”

“He doesn’t love you.”

“I could say the same.”

She gasps as if I’ve slapped her, as if she hasn’t thought the same, as if I am truly insulting her.

“He comes home to me,” she uses the phrase like a shield.

“So he comes here to me.”

“He’s just a little lost right now, mid-life crisis and all,” I can tell this is the lie that keeps her together.

“You think I’m the first?”

“What?”

“I’m not. I’m probably not the last, either.”

“Shut up,” her lips are pinched tightly together. Her eyes remain still; they no do shake with the possibility of tears. She clutches her purse.

“You’re clueless to the man your husband is.”

“We’ve been together for 13 years.”

“And he’s lied to you ever one of them.”

“Shut up.”

I am sorry for her, for the love she has for you.

“He fucks me the way he can never fuck you. He loves me the way he will never love you. Don’t you get it?”

“Get what?”

“What we have is real,” I say. The words remain between us, hard, resounding. She turns sharply and leaves. I am left alone with the words, wondering about their power.

Take the fragment of my poetry and tape them to the bathroom stall door. Stained incantations meant to bring about a love apocalypse. Take the moon in a shot glass and toast to never waking up alone. Try to sweat me out in the heat of redemption. My sin is in your blood. It will never leave you even as you leave me.

Michael Boles is finishing up his senior year at the New School. He also writes poetry and plays.

Posted by Elizabeth Armstrong Moore on Tuesday, April 3rd, 2007 | Email This Post

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