“Little Natalie, never rest until you have uncovered your essential self. Remember that. Somewhere, deep inside you, hidden by all sorts of fears and worries and petty little thoughts, is a clean pure being made of radiant colours.”

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Dearest dearest darling most important dearest darling Natalie-this is me talking, your own priceless own Natalie, and I just wanted to tell you one single small thing: you are the best, and they will know it someday, and someday no one will ever dare laugh again when you are near, and no one will dare even speak to you without bowing first…

Oriental in America Diptych, 2023

Ad Nasuseum Cyanotype and Inkject print

You reach over anyway. The sky does not fall down, fire does not rain from the firmament. Perhaps this time Abraham has found his 10 righteous men. There’s a warmth beneath his skin, down where electric impulses tell him that your hand is clasping his forearm. Seven layers of skin, bundles of filaments lovingly lever the ulna and radius, nerves signal up and down to the brain. And the soul? Well, you’re no theologian, no philosopher, but his dark eyes flicker over to you. Blood pulses, racing through your veins, heat rises into your chest, sweat coalesces in your palms. 

Your body is a body held fast to another body. Someone has to leave first, or so you’ve heard. The wind spins dust into swirled silhouettes eating themselves before your feet. But you refuse to let go, the underworld will surely come to tear you apart one day. But now, now it is just the two of you in his beat-up truck, the heating wheezing from the vent as cars race by on the interstate. 

“We’re going to be late,” He says, leant against his foggy window.

“Maybe that’s not so bad?” He doesn’t turn the key, the car motor whistles as oil comes weeping down the pipes. Emboldened you trace a line up his forearm, fingertips tracing over gooseflesh warmth seeping between the two of you, heat moving from cold to hot. You warm yourself, or he warms you, one way road. His profile stone-cut, eyes flickering from blurring cars to the treeline. A flock of birds take flight, his eyes meet yours. 

“Maybe,” He murmurs. His hand creeps to the stick shift, you feel the muscles in his biceps tense beneath soft skin. He sucks his lips in, shoulders hunched in shame. You know how y’all were raised. You know how hard it is. You want him, even so, even so, you want whatever this is. You body and his body. Him and You. Your bodies meeting, melting, meat handling meat with loving care. Consumption and Carrying. You have learned this well, your body can carry, should carry, could hold him long enough to matter.

The engine sputters. From Park to Reverse to Drive. The skeletal crown above you blurs, wings blurring in the moonlight.  

“We’d better get going.” You sigh. You let go. For-ever reaching, falling, the final curtain is a-falling. The road sprawls ahead in an unceasing ribbon, a rotting wound crossing prairie, lakes, and mountains. The pine of his soap wafts over in your little burrow, wheels turning again and again, engine revving as he gets up to speed. It would be so easy to sleep now. 

You turn. His profile kissed by strained moonlight and the blinking lights of the dash, reflected headlights. Light caught in his eyes, clinging to his brow as everything else slips into an anonymous nothing.  

“Eyes ahead,” he sounds over the roar of the several ton beast devouring the two of you. Its breath caresses your face. You’re tired.