After a few seconds sitting next to him, she placed her hand on his chest, tentatively. She moved her fingers tips back and forth underneath his collar bone. Finally, she rested her palm on his left breast, remembering the many times she had fallen asleep just there. She leaned towards him and placed her lips on his lips, and tried to remember how she kissed him when they were young.
She closed her eyes. In that moment, she felt again like the girl she used to be. But the moments where the past feels like the
present are never long enough.
After only a few seconds, Joe’s breathing became staggered. Meryl quickly raised herself up against his chest.
“What’s wrong?”
She saw a wetness in Joe’s eyes. His face had become so different in the few seconds when she had closed her eyes. She knew he did not remember asking her to kiss him.
He let out a low moan.
“What’s wrong Joe? Why are you crying?”
“It hurts.”
“What hurts? Where hurts?”
But there was no answer. The noises he made just got louder.
A week later that good for nothing doctor told her that it wasn’t the medication.
The cancer was in his brain.
There was so much between them when they were young. The space between them was so charged that it took every part of Meryl to fight what her insides wanted. His power was over her was his skin. He marked her bones.
“Take off your dress.”
Meryl looked up at him. Looking at him made her drunk. She was not used to feeling so out of control. She was in his claws though, held by the desire and the delusion he created. When his body was pressed against hers, she she felt both empty and full. She was floating above, watching; only her pulsing body was present.
“I love you, Meryl.”
When he moved in her everything around her moved too. Images danced across the ceiling, shadows intermingled slowly, kindly, and choreographed. She no longer felt separate from everything around her. Things breathed in her, and shared in the hysteria. She felt her body, her thoughts, her own self all meet and become one. Stars blazed, skies burst, and moons fell.
Nothing was quite the same now.
When they finished, he lay on top of her and didn’t move. He held her so close, that she could feel his breath against her. The heat between them radiated, and Meryl felt as if she was on fire.
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