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Every bleary red digit of the clock, the chill at the edge of the boxer briefs where the bathrobe didn’t cover. We slept together last night, the memory aching like the dregs of a sleeping pill. The clock hadn’t moved since then. You’d already gotten up. I heard the shower running, warm steam, cold bed. So there’s nothing to do but start the day, no? Begin again the duties we had chosen. Even still, how sickening to go out into the icy air, like the nausea that birds feel when they jump from the nest, the nest you left, your silhouette still in the sheets.
All that is mine I carry with me, my arms full of metals and silks to set on the ottoman, to get dressed before the mirror with your aura around me. The slacks in titanium. The shirt pressed in tin. They didn’t match, goddamn, wrong again. I left the shirt unbuttoned to tap fingers down my chest, as if I could press a print into my neck, with my ash and my gold rings, next to the ones you had made, when we were in the nest. Ah, how I wanted to share our mornings together just like our nights, to have you wrap me in my jacket from behind, leave the imprint of yourself upon my back. Instead I had decided to rebuild the temple. They would be expecting me soon, expecting me to dress up as a teevee man, a charlatan preacher. That’s what I chose, my kingdom far from your frigid touch. If I wanted something different I should have said so.
There was a hot burst of air from the bathroom. My shirt still hung open. “Hey,” you said, in your clothes from yesterday, in your jacket already. “I had a good time last night.” I wanted to tell you your hair was sticking up in the back, that it was cute. “But let’s keep this a one-time thing, yeah?” I smiled. I understood. It is good to share what we feel. You slipped out into the morning. I looked into the mirror, a geode, a passionfruit, cracked wide open, slimy yellow insides. We all make sacrifices, and some of us are led to the slaughter.
Poor judgment, poor calculations. I went back to the bed, this time with my clothes to shield me from the cold. I waited for your phantom to visit me in dreams like the Scissorman, your shadow in the doorway taunting me again. I know I’ve chosen poorly. I’ve been punished enough.