Death or Sex

The rope burns stood out, livid against the skin of his neck. He had tattoos and peircings before anyone had even thought to pierce themselves. He smelled of tobacco and weed and mulch as if he had been sleeping under a pile of fresh cut grass. Here were bruises on the inside of his arm and I thought I could smell the chemical tang of the drug fermenting under the tender pale skin there. He was at the end of it. Gone past the end of it. The end of it should have been an hour ago when he dragged a chair up to the end of the noose and broke a rotten beam with the dead weight of his surrendering body.

I knew him a little, not too well. We had spent some gentle moments together, the eye of the storm. He had made me tea. I had served him coffee, forgotten to charge him for it.

There was something dangerous about his pale naked body, the veins that stood out too brightly against his midnight skin, the sepia colour of him as if he were an old photograph, already fading. I kissed him on the mouth and felt the wet of his tongue and thought about disease.

He wanted to be inside me, just for a moment. Skin on skin, which is something I refused to do. His tears were acid. Each one a pain for me to bear. I ingested them. I had some of him inside me. It was a little thing to ease myself into his lap. Just for a moment. I felt his jilted death skulking in the corners of the room. I chased the thought of it away with the heat of my body, slippery with life. When he clung to my hips it was more despair than passion. I let him rest there, at the brink of it, although it contravened my rules. I settled and gave him my stillness. I felt his body calm. I touched the red welts on his neck. He arched his back and it was over. I didn't expect it, but the fact of it was there between us.

"I'm sorry."

He had touched life in me and I felt his death too close. An unfair exchange. I wanted to be angry but there was his life, as it was, stretching uncertainly for another day, perhaps more.

"Well, we won't do that again." I told him and we never did.