my placeyours, your bodymine #3
the ceiling. Gravity will not define us. Won’t control us. We are elemental. We are one, our bodies melding, blending, ascending
the space, we are coming we are coming we are—
We reach our final destination. Our little death. Together.
All three of us.
I can’t hold myself back any longer. I lose control and reach in. Slip past his skin.
I find my way inside Jordan. To the very core of him.
I need this. Need him. His body is right there. His life and everything it has to offer. His memories. His past. His pain.
How couldn’t I? Just a taste. Just for a breath.
I shouldn’t peek. I can’t help myself. There’s so much more to explore.
I’m rummaging around Jordan’s psyche, seeing him from within.
There’s no hiding now. The dark corners of his heart are open to explore.
Every cavity, every chamber. There’s always been a sadness, a chasm, in Jordan, yearning to be filled, but he’s never quite found the right person to share it with. To be consumed by.
Perhaps we can share. Possession is a form of intimacy, isn’t it? You simply have to . . . let the devil in.
Seconds. That’s all I have. Barely a breath. There are so many shadows of his past to explore. So many things to see. The
chambers of his heart are different rooms, each one full of a different memory. His past is put on display within their cavities.
I can go further and further in, a fun house of arteries, and never leave, losing myself within his life. His past.
Here is his mother, sitting in the hospital. Her delirium has her in its grip. Her body has succumbed to its cancers, gnawed
on from the inside out. She’ll never leave this bed.
Look at little Jordan, so young. He sits by his mother’s bedside, listening to her wheeze. Her eyes find some distant spot—in
the room, but not, somewhere beyond the walls—losing herself in that rapture. When she returns, her eyes grasp her son, she
smiles, chapped lips cracking, exuding a pale chill from her skin. My lighthouse, she calls him.
There it is. His first touch with death.
The other side.
I can’t stop now. I need more. What else is there? What crumbs of his life can I find?
Here he is, older now, on his bike. He’s riding through the street, outrunning himself. He’s trying to escape, outrace his
own heart. Exhaust himself. All the rage. The hurt.
Look how fast he goes. But you can’t outrun the devil, Jordan . . . He’ll always follow you, no matter how fast you go. Look
over your shoulder and he’s always at your back.
Who’s this Jenn, where did she come from, where did she go, what chamber of his heart is she hiding in, why did he hurt her, the memory of her faint and aching?
Just a little bit further. Just to see what’s inside.
Just a peek. A taste. I extend my tongue and oh my, what do we have here, look at that, what a delirious heart, a ravenous soul, so beautiful, so deep, I can’t stop myself, one taste is not enough, not nearly enough, how much further can I go, what else is there to see, that first scraped knee, slicing his thumb on a piece of quartz he found in a creek, wishing to split it in half and share with his best friend, only to split his skin instead, the soft wool of his mother’s handknit sweater against his cheek, the fuzz of it finding its way into his hair, the broken bones beginning as a child, mending flesh, his first kiss, never the second, perhaps the third but most certainly the fifth and sixth, the ache of losing his mother, the emptiness it opened, that sinkhole in his soul, the rage toward his father brimming within, the bike, the speed, wind in his hair, the race against his rage, outpacing it, outlasting it, the adrenaline, the tension in his body, the sinew strapped to the masts of his bones, setting sail, here he is, free, alive when he rides, dead when he doesn’t, his heart pounding in his chest, his skin flushed with blood, his veins flooding, the taste of copper on his tongue, red, red everywhere, and oh it is glorious, glorious indeed to dive in this deep, how much further can I go, where is the end of him, where is the bottom, I keep diving, diving, deeper into the recesses of his bottomless heart, entering chamber after chamber, a honeycomb of cavities, more compartments than one heart could ever contain, but I’ll fill them all, I’ll flood them, devour them, until there is nothing left, nothing that I do not know, every inch, every fiber, every nook and cranny, the nerve endings, the sins secreted in his cells, there it is, death at last, death took him, death had him in its grip, but he came back, dragging himself out from the abyss, look what he is now, look what filled in that emptiness, that heart, dripping sin like honey, I want it, all of it, I want to blossom, I want to take root in this fertile soil, I want to be the flower that blooms from this man’s body, I want to exist in his skin because it holds such a depth of sin . . .
The devil is you, Jordan. Can’t you see? You can never outrun yourself . . .
No matter where you go, there you are.
You’ll always be you.
Damned.