She wanted them – his eyes – to speak to her, to tell her all the things his mouth wouldn’t, but they were impenetrable as stones. She grabbed his wrist and held it firmly, feeling the smooth skin on his forearm, the slight ripple of veins, the weight of it lying in her palm. Then she brought it up to her lips and kissed it softly, running her tongue across the scars on his skin, the shrapnel bites from some dusty forgotten war, past the inoculations he’d received as a child, and then she fell onto him, her whole body forced into one deflation, spirit and muscle together, and the room melted away from her, the day, the week, the life, everything she thought about and didn’t want to think about, everything that was keeping her awake at night, that was running through her brain like crazed viral screams – all of it forgotten and lost as she lowered her head and tasted his mouth.Blue Valentine was playing in the background. He’d brought the LP with him, knowing her copy would be lost somewhere among the boxes and bags, the unpacked strata of her life.
