PERFECT.

“I don’t appreciate your tardiness.”  Her hand wiping the dirt off at the hem of her skirt, though not completely. A slow breath out. There is never a rush. Nicolas is only a few steps away, and she moves closer, bringing her hand up to smooth out a crease that did not exist. It stains in the shape of her fingers. “Let’s try to be on time from now on, hm? You look well.”

‘   You waited.   ’     A remark drier than his tone.     Unsmiling yet noon-lit.     Shadowed by the leaves above.     His heartbeat rests under her hand.     WHEN OPPOSITE,   YOU ARE WHOLE.     And he,   selfish as gravity’s pull,   draws close to drag at her yolking edges.     The wound goes unfelt,   soothed by its own spill.     A thumb in the crease of her wrist.     It pulls her taut,   red seams and white-pressed skin,   until the muscle cedes to its fold again.     Imperfect.     Let it be known.     Truth will be obliged.     ‘   Aren’t you generous,   ’     he says without lilt.     It is not death hour,   and still you toll.     Day-cut silhouette.     Sometimes,   you’ll play the game.     Just for fun.     You draw close,   entering her breath-space:   the crest of neck into her shoulder.     There might be something to see,   but you can only focus on the said of the cavity shared between you and the woman that colours you.     ‘   Suppose I can be just so,   Maria,   if I keep that empty hand warm   ( … )   but I don’t only have my warmth,   no?     And you don’t only have your cold.   ’     He turns to her without pulling away.     An eye on her lashes.     ‘   What is la mosquita muerta¹ going to give today?   ’

Lamb of God,   behold an innate sin yet unmarked.     What becomes of a flock,   when you pare back its teeth.     A blurred trace of a boy.     Yellowing in such a shaded,   blue morning.     He isn’t capable of red,   beyond an angry blush.     The tooth-cut,   accidental,   on a sucked lip.     A clotted sip of heavy red wine at a Sunday service.     You have half a mind to just stand and stare.     To show him the lamb of God,   in its truest bleating glory.     That definition would be truer,   when rended from your hand.     Pitiless.     Tired.     It would suit you better than this:   haunting a lord’s house,   for another view at gaunt hours.     Or,   put simply,   what was.     Your loose collar.     His hair,   askew.     In later years:   who could spit the farthest into the cemetery.     Onto a fresh-soil grave.     Nick ignores the boy’s question.     He begins a pace,   instead,   towards his tightening inner circle.     ‘   No one’s here,   but you and me.   ’     This voice is clearer than his sorry warbling.     You eye his shoes,   and how straight they are now.     The slow walk finishes,   now a few feet away from him.     You nod to those shoes.     ‘   And your disobeying feet   ( … )   are you afraid of them?   ’

Your hand slips easily,   borne to his tart lip’s avail,   from his clavicle to his shoulder.     A light clench,   there,   as you imagine wordless pink lips.     Shut into a clenched jaw,   reduced to a pitchy whine;   open for a silenced yelp.     Either way,   it would be nicer than staring at this self-satisfied grin.     Salted and smug.     Igniting flame where it doesn’t belong:   deep in the boughs of a night-wood,   where slit-pupils would gleam at such a thumb-flicked match.     Were you a better man,   you would wonder,   idly,   whether your eyes seem brighter now,   reflective in this cruel light.     But what else could you do?     It’s already started.     So,   you lean into his shoulder and pull his arm,   by the wrist,   towards your own.     To cut off any further provoke:   that butter-knife barrage of tongue.     He does it to himself,   really.     ‘   Ah-ah.     Did that sound like begging to you?   ’     Reciprocated mock.     Almost a coo.     Here,   let pain comfort.     Here,   the question precedes you.     That’s it.     You already knew what he wanted.     A reddened arm-stretch,   beyond the pertinent limits of further.     Your forehead lowers.     ‘   Come on,   be a good boy and tell me how sorry you are.   ’

Day can no longer engulf this infernal knocking.     Splintered yet thick:   it follows herringbone slants and resounds,   henceforth,   at irregular intervals.     Like a drowning lung gasping against contracting ribs.     Blunt and tight.     From a wintered knuckle,   or a fitted tooth.     A kneecap,   without thigh or calf.     Mud-found.     Held,   once more.     It could be any of these.     It could be none.     He hears it again.     Bookended by a cutting paired gaze:   the next toll.     Suppose it’s a baby-soft fingernail,   this time,   or a chiselled tongue-bone.     The candle-smoke curls close,   bristling along his moustache hairs,   which his nostril matches with a curbed pinch.     As if irked enough into forming a snarl.     Tap-tap-tapped into this moment of goad.     Nick defaults to sharp disinterest.     ‘   Too early for this,   girl,   ’     he deadpans slowly,   hands falling idly below his hips.     Together,   here,   they’re alone.     She could be a corpse before anyone blinks.     Her skull would yolk into the windowsill cracks,   down to the ground where the rest of her would curdle.     After a crack so sudden,   she would’ve bitten the tip of her tongue.     It would draw too many eyes.     You breathe evenly.     ‘   I’ll make it easier for you.     Did something wake you?   ’

Eyes on target.     Bug out.     Blue on blue,   the memory spasms,   bleedingly desperate as you give life to those you took,   blue on blue,   Zero—   Zer—     Before it can finish its script,   zero melts to a fallen one.     Its serif aloft,   for a hewn or halved curl to stick and complete a backwards two.     How she looks,   candle-lit amber-sheen,   with an elbow on the chair’s back.     Her hand outstretched for his shoulder.     Metaphor is not adequate.     Heaven-washed.     Moon-struck.     There are no words.     She lends herself,   solely,   to feel,   to that feel.     An amused scoff.     ‘   Are you bored?   ’     Drip-dropped assent.     Nick gently takes the short glass from her hand.     Swallows without taking a sip.     A sharp lustre to his gaze.     His head inclines further.     ‘   I could throw you to the dogs,   ’     he says,   like going out into the thickening night could constitute a roseate fever.     The antonym of apathy.     Teeth.     ‘   They might even enjoy the show.   ’

Without much persuade,   she draws his gaze back up to her.     Her fingers pull at your hairline.     Unwitting   /   Natural.     An arm lives freer than a self.     Your own hand lingers closer to the down-curve of her knee.     Forbidden salt-warmth.     The ascent would be gradual.     How hushed and bitten her lips would become.     A furtive press of thigh against thigh.     Fingers meeting at her nape.     Instead:   his hand glides ankleward,   and her skin whispers.     Kitten heel balancing on his thigh.     Nick unlatches her foot from the possibility of straying on the hardwood.     She needn’t return tonight.     ‘   You could   ( … )   but why would you?   ’     A small pat on the bridge of her foot,   once bare.     For her next.     He hums,   almost contemplative.     ‘   Should I guess at what you’re waiting for?     It couldn’t be a reason,   or an offer.   ’     The grasp settles firmer.     Gaps of his own speech:   you’ve already invoked me.     In lieu of word,   he slides her shoes deeper into the corridor,   skipping like dewy flat-stones along morning waves,   falling beyond his field of vision.    A lure.     Oblique.     His complement to her dance.     ‘   For something bad to happen.   ’

A corner of his lip twitches.     His muscles soften.     ‘   Don’t tell me you’re out of your depth,   ’     he drawls,   brows lowering and meeting in a faint wrinkle.     Because you’re not,   he doesn’t say,   or you wouldn’t frame yourself in blood-rust and,   instead,   long for another glimpse of the full-eyed moon.     Cold-kissed promise of death,   in night air’s midst.     A bare second of it.     Entrails,   glassier than tears.     Gone.     He stares after her,   lingering on the framing auburn tresses,   before strolling to the spare chair and her jacket slung over its back.     ‘   My life belongs to your capable hands   ( … )   it’ll be hard for either of us to escape,   yes?   ’     Collar curled into his palm.     Thumb curving along its back lip.     He returns,   jacket proffered.     Your name,   again,   in my absence.     She unmakes you into an I.     The eye blinks,   and cants its head.     ‘   Be good with it,   won’t you?   ’     More resides,   now,   in the unsaid:   in lieu of having me;   because of me;   for me,   Dilara,   for me.

It had always been easy enough to leave, ungoverned by any courtesy, muted in recurring departure. Now, nothing or no one called. Wasteful with time, stretched on longer and barren. Jude watched on, the trail of an accepted hand given to the creature. Leant into touch with an ease not possessed by their keeper. Trust, then, for the humans they had been stuck here with, or more likely hunger—need for more than could be given. “Lucky gambler?” A sniff. What people clung to in the meaninglessness of any existence. “Not so much with his back leg. Like a tangled cable.”  A foal buckled from birth, sturdier now but still marked. How peculiar it was still to drag life into this place. The young that grew tall, ones she had once pulled from their mothers and placed on dirt where nothing was not quite permitted to live. 

And then here,   a brother lounging across a clean countertop,   grinning over the fogged curve of a morning coffee.     Meaner.     Vindictive.     He knows you will always have the stomach for dead things.     For the mundane lifting onto its hind legs.     Underbelly,   there.     What else is there to see?     A body,   place.     A body,   placed.     Hey Nicky,   hey Bicky,   hey F———     [   ROLL OFF THE TONGUE AS HE IS,   YOUR BROTHER DOES NOT LEND TO DIALOGUE.     YOU LISTEN,   AND YOU WATCH.     THAT IS ALL HE NEEDS.   ]     D’ya want to see what I got?     It’ll be a middle finger behind his other hand,   or a dried scruff from a buried animal.     Neither would make you love him less.     Nick stares at her.     Lets silence chew the questions he won’t dwell on.     The circle of discovery is far more interesting.     He whistles,   long and slow.     ‘   And still breathing   ( … )   this boy’s got the foot of a rabbit.   ’     For effect,   Nick claps his shoulder.     The horse snorts,   and otherwise loses interest,   as Nick’s own roots elsewhere.     ‘   Living badly won’t ruin his luck.     He might’ve been mine,   if I was a betting man.   ’     He leans his elbows on the fence,   angular against a straight line,   tilting his head to one side.     ‘   But instead,   he belongs to a broke,   betting woman.   ’     His head bobs with each adjective,   finishing heavily on the noun.     A deeper baseline.     You know you can’t place her.     Woman.     A woman with an appetite.     A blood-breath woman,   peeling deer tick from dense fur.     He taps an unheard tune against the wood.     ‘   What else can’t you buy,   hmm?     Peace and quiet,   fresh air and personal space.     Clarity   ——   a good night’s sleep.   ’

@baarra // closed starter.

The day is heavy,   humid after a long night,   like dead air trapped in a pale peach lung.     Porous and fat after denied a drier decay.     Tufts of horses and snorts hemming around dual silhouettes.     Sharing the spit of wet grass.     Overfull mouths would bode well for his hunt.     Its breath a better bait than a newborn wail.     A fear braised,   once looked upon.     The tap-tap-tap of night’s finger on a second-storey window.     Curious,   his head cants in the direction he stalks.     North.     To the animal’s keen snout.     Her blonde hairline,   curling down her brow-bone.     Embroidered high-points.     ‘   On occasion,   ’     he says languidly,   stretching the syllables beyond their constraints.     A fifth and sixth.     Your eye darts from her,   to the horse,   and back.     The highest angle of her nose bridge.     ‘   You’re a view kind of woman   ( … )   and out here is better than back there,   yes?   ’     He shifts in place.     Sleeping plains underfoot.     ‘   You’d prefer the vibrant paint,   wouldn’t you?     I can tell.     So.     Are these the Van Gogh or the Monet kind of fields?   ’

This land grows teeth,   coarse and hungry,   when night swallows day and the moon outshines the sun.     Humans of the night,   doe-shaped,   sway as they hedge around the settlement,   though the gummy earth does not ebb far below their feet,   nor flow to their dry kneecaps.     Shoulder-to-shoulder with quiver-less trees.     Covered in the breath of a silver city.     Iced tongue.     Clear air.     In their skin:   a wet mirror,   to look upon your own transparency.     It wanes,   down to its amidst.     She doesn’t.     She is just as alight as the godless moon.     Ribbons of white,   pooling at both corners of your eyes.     You haven’t been awake long,   hmm?     He offers another short hum,   steeling swiftly into a locked gaze.     Barely perceptible breath.     ‘   Are you going to answer me,   or is there shame in your rest?   ’     This is not a repetition.     It is the silkier voice,   rather,   pearled at the base of your tongue.     Dreadful care.     Erose.     Parched and peeved.     He strides slowly to her and the candle.     An arm’s reach away.     ‘   Don’t cower now   ( … )   pinch it.     Like you said,   it won’t hurt.   ’

lack of patience. margot wanted to grit the words between her teeth. grind them down in admittance until her mouth was full of white dust. clean of the truth. weak in his eyes. instead, margot stood a little beneath his height with a chest puffed and a tongue withholding. patience thinned with the bouncing knee — but she now stood unflinching. allowing nothing but a grin to stretch across her features. pleasant, but behind hollow pupils vibrated chaotic rage. hungry. they'd not waste it upon each other. "must save our energy for the hunt." if she didn't hold a childish nature, the woman would have set forth out the door. yet, instead, as the strap of her bag slid onto her arm...the other arm lifted and smacked against his own. strong. practically a brick wall. one that margot wanted to chip away at.

Thresholds,   cued splinters,   recede to a doorway.     This is true of each inverse.     Inward to the right,   enflamed flick from a barn cat’s ear,   and then inward to the left,   a sheepdog’s prompt snout twitch.     Flurry   /   Fed.     A wet collect of hand and stomach,   momentarily dried by her—   by the sharp unfurl of arm on firm arm.     His gaze snaps to her thin grin.     And he tuts.     ‘   Save it,   ’     he says,   lower than gravel:   deep as the coastal brontide.     Bloodlessly pale.     That face doesn’t belong to a pike,   hingeless mouth and heavenward eye,   though her hands might.     Despite what they share.     Because of it.     ‘   Speak to your game like that,   girl scout,   or else you’ll join them bounding across my scope.   ’     Before the next word,   Nick looks outward.     Open-palmed push on the heavy door.     ‘   Now,   don’t fall behind.   ’

the sound of water filling the cast iron inside of the old kettle soothed parts of rylee. those hidden corners that were too overshadowed by running pairs of feet, needy minds — her daughters. this moment was a tender pause in the time she was needed. a moment to gaze out the kitchen window and allow her mind to drift somewhere more quiet. drift to a softness her children didn't provide throughout the day. " 'suppose i dunno how to unfold any other way." now, she softened still after the water was turned off. children occupied by the new excitement of having their own rooms. rylee, along with the girls, had been too stiff to be independent. they all had been sleeping together — limbs tangled in fear of loosening without the other during the night. " it's not much," taking notice of him glancing around, "but we make what we can." almost an apologetic tone. rylee placed the kettle on the stove top with a light clank. "i let the girls draw on walls and what not. let them have any freedom they can have in a place like such." the irish woman moved to the dining room table, hoping he'd sit. "don' suppose ye draw on your walls ?" smile was kind — always offering some warmth.

‘   On my arm,   maybe.     Under my sleeve.   ’     His answer almost rises to its appropriate level of interest.     Absent yet honest like a milked reflection,   father-dull,   beyond the periphery.     Stringed balsa-wood corpsing after tendon.     Crisp to the ear.     Half-swallowed to the throat.     Bare milliseconds in his head-shake.     A blinked meet of brown with marbled blue.     ‘   They would’ve given me a hot neck.     Dough-y,   you know?     Sticky.     Like we’d just baked.   ’     Again,   his attention trails.     Raised brows.     Following her smile and its offer,   sunken to a tabled undergrowth.     A shadow is originally,   after all,   a highlight.     ‘   That was nicer to learn.   ’     In theory,   you should say.     In practice,   the truest definition of you as a thing to define,   this memory would place a fresh roll in your hold.     Greyed by a wintered morning;   warmed by a mother’s rigid heart.     All for him   —   the he that formed last and left first;   the he once known as Luis,   now known as nothing   —   to steal one full-mouthed bite.     Just one single bite,   for an intent is greedy enough without a hunger to compete,   to spit into the toilet and leave love’s crumb to another open grave.     He would follow this,   of course,   after you wedge his head into the bowl.     An arc of light,   beaded together by water and flung hair.     The art of the scene,   he would say.     It would be a shame,   in this afterlife,   to not splice the dead onto the living.     ‘   Did they learn from you   —   to like painting?   ’

You are tactile,   and then,   you are the evoke.     The done before doing.     The wade after the ripple.     Bloodless rib as the underbelly for breath-thick water,   like pink meat in a fault-line lake.     Boiled of its coating.     Therein replete with cracked lily pads,   lavendered hastily by worm-food,   unearthed.     Hands,   five-knuckled;   eyes,   de-pupiled.     This ritual anticipates you,   fine-clothed and lazy,   and puts the deck,   pre-shuffle,   in your rigid hands.     Neutralised,   then,   by skinned use.     Nick lines the card-edges.     His head cants.     He hums curtly,   for a halved moment,   as he curves his thumb into the corners.     Ridge on bone.     A whispered flicker,   in this meet.     ‘   All your mouths to feed   ( … )   and you give the hat,   ’     he says,   depleted pitch and gravelled,   placing this man into his periphery.     This man who adheres to red hearts and black spades,   who makes haze of the inverse.     Of the decay that could cause such an old horizon.     Greyed by sand and salt.     Sweetened by bruised fruit.     Quiet.     The image catches on each of its synonyms.     As voice does when it broaches on sentiment.     Something heavier in lieu of weather or cattle or card.     ‘   You love them,   do you?   ’     His gaze blinks up to Maverick.     Harsh jawline smoothed,   post-jest,   for a coupled shuffle.     A long,   stoic moment.     Complete inertia.     Blink-less.     And then,   a bounce of smile.     He taps the deck on the table,   twice,   punctuated by a point and squint.     Slapped lips.     ‘   Ah,   I should bet what I love,   yes?     Take a guess.     See how well you know me.     I’ll let you.   ’

She is alight under her gaze   —   fluttering happily in her summer floret way like she was while glistening,   blood-slick,   along the floorboards   —   but cannot peel her gums back,   to reveal her true wants.     That is what his hand is for:   combing her cutely into a looser meat.    A pull as slow as a scream making orifice of a candle-lit mirror.     Her plush-petal meat.     His hand curls around her calf.     Firm.     Warm.     Her dress bunches midway between his wrist and elbow.     There is no pull nor grip.     It is just there.     ‘   Lean on me,   and hand me your foot.   ’     A slow cadence,   stern in this reprise.     Oil-spill heavy.     Absently affectionate like a knuckle pressing,   again,   against a greening bruise.     His thumb brushes her taut muscle once.     You can’t see her neck from this angle.     ‘   Be good for me,   Dilara.     I won’t ask again.   ’

Before she could slip away fully,   he palms the back of her hand until it returns to the bandage and the surrounding skin.     Saddled by his gentle groom.     ‘   You feel that?   ’     His muscles ripple.     There is no hard-set line on his face.     Grim for the fleece-dust of her red touch.     ‘   That means it hurts.   ’     Raised brows.     Quaint diablerie,   almost boyish,   in this coalesce of you and her.     Inflection borders on rasp,   now,   as her blush extends to his arm.     ‘   That’s also why the coyote hung from me for so long.     Don’t tell me it knows blood better than you do.     You sure you’re the right doctor for me?   ’     A wrinklet of a smile.     His calloused fingers catch on her knuckles.     And then:   his gaze catching,   like rain droplets,   along her bone.     Rabbit-cheeked.     ‘   Were you this quick to deflect before?     Waiting for someone to see you   ( … )   and too blushed to admit it.   ’

His shoulder blades must embed now,   tenderly,   into the weakening mud floor.     The foot-prints would melt together into a single groove,   to be re-named simply:   back-prints of pain.     An outline of yours,   for once,   not coated in blood.     And yet,   he persists.     Again.     This pain is not enough.     Paltry.    There must be more,   the itch says,   like the fine,   bone-skin of a hangnail.     It yearns for a long pull,   down to the knuckle but far above bone.     That would be too intimate.     In an earlier year,   you would’ve called this boy,   Luis,   and it would’ve been your father hovering over him like this.     Papa.     Ah,   Chase does nothing in halves.     You become angular,   discarding the board for a cleaner hand.     Your foot drags along his shoulder,   collecting fabric,   until you pin his shirt to the ground,   so you can root your kneel into this makeshift slab.     A deepened voice.     ‘   If you were on your knees,   at my door,   begging,   I wouldn’t save you.   ’     A hand placed squarely on his chest,   holding a lower fraction of your weight,   while the other loops around his elbow.     Your eyes darken,   somehow.     ‘   You need me to teach you some manners,   is that it?     A bit of discipline,   to colour your day.   ’