Nine-pound


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In a moment/ they will give in to the pull that is stronger than will or choice or good sense/ It is heavier than gravity/ more weighty than any of these textbook-guaranteed knowns/ There is no explanation for this connection/ There are no facts of the case/ though they spend most of their other intercourses trying to prove a hypothesis/ any hypothesis/ via dissection.

It’s a fine line between making hay and clutching at straws.

In a moment/ his thumbtip will slowly part her lips/ a matter-of-fact pulling her bottom one down/ as if clay/ until these do part/ and make space for him.

Then/ his hand is his hand/ and her head is his cup/ He doesn’t hold it by the handle/
not dainty, fingerpads coming together, tea time, pinkie being held back from the natural punctuation/ No/ Her head is a vessel/ and he palms it by the base/ a glass of red.

And his kiss is as much about extraction as it is about request and taking/ and it holds inside it all the vibrations of every sinew and ligament aligned within each of them/ which are now all attentive/ on their marks/ and set for go.

When words are impossible, there is only one way to say “I want you.”

He’ll pick her up like a happy grocery/ and provide near soft landing on his mattress/ He’ll see her from his height as a platter of grab/ He feels like birthday morning/ before the present is opened.

Soon/ he will feel her toenails rasp down his back/ and the slow viney twisting of her over his palms/ as they lie open/ under her escape sighs of ebb and wave/ She will tilt toward him/ arch her back/ and expose her jugular/ as she makes satin pillows of her thighs for his cheeks.

Her eyes will not dart around the room/ They will not close/ succumb to the primal rhythm/ of everything else/ No/ her eyes will seek/ will lock in continual question and answer/ Her retinas will giggle/ Her pupils will guffaw/ Her irises will show a color and dimension only her lovers get to see.

It will be the slightest gesture that is the most electric between them/ the invisible strings connecting his parts and her parts/ There is no teacher for this/ They don’t need map, scout, compass/ It’s a path they’ve travelled before/ It’s as familiar to him as his treehouse/ the one turned into kindling two decades ago.

There are assorted fits/ these precise measurements that surprise him/ Her waist is the exact length of his forearm/ Her right breast could make a winter home of his armpit/ His long thumb nests in the hollow of her hipbone/ when he pulls her down/ When she takes his lobe between her canines/ the tip of her nose snugly plugs the sweet wax cave of his ear.

Their moisture is not water nor oil/ but something else/ elusive/ a conduit equally quick/ an efficient messenger of cryptic missives/ Everyone knows this dead language/ but not a living soul can translate it.

In the bed now/ the tempo is finally fevering/ His heart chambers are taking impact after impact/ His ventricles are flapping audibly in slippery cardiac flex/ There is no other tool in existence right now/ but the hammer/ There is no other name for this burden/ because it weighs exactly nine pounds/

and he must rid himself of it.