Hovering in the door frame is a portal whose tangerine swirl drops us on a tiny bed in the middle of Los Angeles.
Directly above us is a street sign, above that a traffic light, above that an overpass, and above that a cloudless sky away from which millions of tiny creatures buzz and hum in their search for shelter.
Every passing car is an echo of the last, carrying someone that reminds me of you. You’re lying right next to me but it still hurts to watch a hint of your cheekbones disappear into the night. They’re just silvery streaks of vague spirits but what tears me apart is they’re headed for a place I know I’ll never see.
Left goes your body and the mattress sinks over asphalt like a conversation taking the shape of someone else’s memory. I pull you from the edge harder than you expect and you tumble with an excited smile a thousand feet per second into my arms.
A moment of boundless red as your teeth sink into my chest. We lose seven days just like this and six more when I take a fistful of your hair. I can’t remember how long you’ve been inside of me and I can’t tell if I’m inside of you, all I know is for some reason we’re not close enough. Our forms harden, become stone, so we leave them behind and take on new bodies under rose-colored sheets.
They’ve taken notice, gathering around with empty glasses in hand and old newspapers tucked under their arms. They whisper as you run your legs over my back then drive your fingers between my ribs. They swallow mouthfuls of invisible brandy when I kiss your stomach and I feel you tense when I linger too long around your naval. A handful of hateful words spoken over the ends of cigarettes set them alight and everyone is calm once more.
I hear faint laughter and then the wet crawl of your tongue into my ear. We’re a tangle of things that matter and for every one of your intentional breaths I can’t help but claw at the back of your neck. You’re there then gone, over and over again behind the involuntary opening and closing of my eyes so I have no choice but to fill your head with sand.
Los Angeles comes crashing down and your face collides with mine like the instant that created all things. Impossibly dense in its directionless cascade, up becomes down and everything is drawn inward toward your spine.
It rains gold when your fingernails find the parts of my body that have never seen the sun and I want more than anything to keep your feet between my lips.
You’re larger than me now and capricious in your desire to be held. Everything is a fragment of a fragment until Los Angeles is just a place in the distance where the young dance to American music and the old glare behind thick billows of smoke.
In the wake of another echo I pray you still secret away the desire to drink yourself into oblivion. I pray that tomorrow we’ll murmur incomprehensible nothings to each other as we spiral into a multi-colored grotesquerie.
I’m terrified that at the threshold of the portal I’ll look over my shoulder and you won’t be there. I’m terrified that the distance is too far to travel. I’m afraid that the bed in your mind is neatly made.
But I can hear our mirror rattle against the wall.
The ceiling fan spins overhead.
Wednesday has been here for some time.
Fantasies unlimited will carry me to Thursday.