tell me the truth.

     li wrinkles her nose. 

     she recognizes the incongruity as it licks up her spine: the repulsion when it tastes the blood, the knowledge that she had been fine enough to wear it home. she had been the one. and still, ‘ what does it taste like? ’ she sways a little, like gravity has twisted the dial and left her a little too heavy within the lightness that permeates her head. moseby arches against her calf, solid warmth and unconditional love. she wants to lean into them both. (she doesn’t want to make a mess.)

“You’ve done that before? You’ve done that? Should I try it? Is it like a drug? Will I get sick? Will I get high? Let’s go to the ocean.”

More drugs are the last thing that she needs. 

“My sister works in a diner. You work in a fucking death trap. Can we just, like, go get hotdogs? Off the side of the road is safer than getting in on your employee discount.”

palm up, its fingers close around her hand. envelop it. the numbness lifts. it squeezes harder and harder—a knuckle of hers pops—until it can feel the shrinking and swelling pulse of her veins. her blood is warm and trails all through the body like viscous red slugs. it can feel that migration skim along its skin. with her hand encaged within its hand (the size and shape of a raccoon’s ribcage: white and lifeless, too), it can almost pretend like her pulse is its. it concentrates. listens. listens in the way strangling is listening. then lets its grip shrink and swell with the rhythm of her pulse.

     simultaneous in maintaining it, she loses feeling in her hand. feels it in its fealty and the small, sharp spike of pain in the depth of encroaching numbness. she winces, moves her fingers - as an insect fluttering against the sticky web it willingly flies into, as if to say, loosen up a little bit, i’m only human. but that feeling fades, too. it’s like stepping out of snow and into hot water, with gooseflesh and the too-muchness of the submersion. some precursor to relief.