More Stuff I Wrote That You May Not Have Read

Cilia (Revision)

She was asleep already. Soft breaths like quiet sobs. Her face unlined and glowing blue in the shadow of the television, a child’s innocence, a Greek statue, a velvet dune at moonlight.

I watched her in the mirror, her hair in my nose, that scent I can’t describe, but fresh, tousled, beckoning me.

She moved against me unconsciously, a spasm. I felt the heat of her and pressed my back closer and felt her radiate, the way she fucked me, lost and dreamy, taking me into her like a salve, lathering us both, sweat, come, blood, guts, hell, heaven, inferno of gold and tundra of steel.

Her chest rose and fell imperceptibly so that I kept checking to see if she was still breathing, the way you do with a newborn. My fingers to her neck, brushing aside that hair and lingering, waiting for the beat, beat to prove that she was real.

I drove home one night when the Pacific’s mist crawled over the range and filled the Sepulveda Pass. It was late, early, and I ran into brake lights, which rose from nowhere, like shrouded flames. The red was like an alarm and it thudded in my eyes even after I passed, to where I was seeing colors, jaundiced and bloody; cilia, waving back and forth, side to side, like a parade, my own private celebration. I waved back and the car drove itself, my path prescribed. Hands of fate. "How did I get here?" I muttered to nobody in particular and put my fingers to her neck.