Raw

Disclaimer: After a meal of simplicity, of white rice, soy and fish at its virginal, uncooked state, my body becomes a source of my writing. As follows...

*

The air conditioning in the room is on the “fan” setting. The little orange light is lit up and a gurgle of churning air emits from the vents. It feels like someone is breathing on the back of my neck and cheek in the confined space of his room and if I close my eyes I can almost feel an invisible presence lying next to me, chin on my shoulder, whispering into my neck. The tepid breath from the mouth of the vent leaves a thin film of dampness clinging to my body.

*

I lay parallel on his sheets, slept in and soft from his body, legs crossed so my ankles touch. Condensation forms where my knee rests on top of the other. When I move positions the skin on my legs pulls away from each other like cellophane on the squares of packaged cheese you find in the grocery store.

*

When the atmosphere is swampy, my body thrives, pulses with the heat and the churning air from the fan. I like the way it feels with the lights off, as if I’m some transformed creature that only emerges at night, glowing in moon shadows and midnight blue that reflects off of my dewy flesh so I am bathed in incandescence.

*

The air clings to be here the way it does in the kitchen at work. I hate being too cold and think of the sweat that runs like raindrops down the crevice of my chest as I dart in and out of the kitchen, front to the back of the house, and when I look at him that same glow coats his face like some gemstone dust.

*

I decide, right there, bare to the world, that chilled air that dispels from the vents is flat and listless, 2-D, if air had dimensions. The stagnant, late summer aura is full, rich and buttery leaves a kind of polish on my skin, is the same air that takes my chopped, mound of hair and swirls it into haphazard waves and curls, so that the tendrils tuft out in places like baby goose down. I’m forced out of my makeup habit when the air sticks to me, my face is multifaceted and bare, so that it does not feel like it is made of clay. It’s easier to smile. He kisses me and I taste salt on his upper lip.

*

When he is on top of me, I notice how warm the room is. My fingertips on his back trail soggy lines from the droplets of sweat that have gathered in the dips and curves where he arcs. He notices that I have stopped moving my lips over his, stopped running my tongue over his teeth and ceases trying to stimulate my unresponsive mouth. I am somewhere else now, too aware of the condensation we have produced on each other’s bodies.

*

He wipes two fingers over my moist temples, then moves his bottom lip over the sweat that dots the curve where my collarbone and shoulder meet. I concentrate on the contrast between my nails and his cropped white blonde hair, now matted with perspiration. The same stark contrast as how they appear when the dig into his apple butter skin littered with freckles so light they are almost gray. I would never tell him I focus more on my hand against his skin than his lips on my neck.

“Yeah. I like to be too warm, not sweltering, you know?” I like the way his hair feels between my fingers. “There is something about that dull sheen on your skin when you start to become overheated, like that pearl essence on the inside of a shell, like an oyster or calm maybe.” He runs a large hand down the length of my arm. His fingers are thick and careful with their touch, graceful, and the way he entwines my own fingers in his takes me back to hours before when he balanced chopsticks there, methocially placing fish on my tounge I felt its in between my legs, that sensation of utter euphoric flavor.

“I like that flush you get too, that same sensation you feel when your skin is sunburned and everything that touches it is cold like ice.” I paused between words as I take his callused fingertips and purse my lips over them one by one. Miso and ginger left on the corners of my mouth.

I’m more aware of my body when I am damp and glossed. It is a second skin un-shed.

*

The nibble of his teeth on the milky insides of my thighs has stopped and he is looking up at me, his chin resting on my belly button. Does he want me to shut up? His exhales spurt little puffs of humid air on my stomach. No, he wants to say something.

*

His voice pulls me from the indigo colored meditation. Passion is somewhere between purple and red. Indigo.

*

Sinking into the overstuffed pillows from the weight of his body on top of me, all I see is a shade of blue like sea glass. Maybe aqua and marine, more teal than blue. His eyes change color when he smiles or becomes animated, like someone turned up the volume on the hue. Intense and throbbing into mine, I want to see them so closely that they fill my field of vision, nothing but the flecks of sour apple green that made them pop against his pastel skin and silver eyelashes. His eyes remind me of a cold that is so frigid it burns.

He takes my chin in the clutch of two fingers and a thumb. He doesn’t want me to look away. And I don’t want to.

“Your eyes reminded me of melting chocolate in a pot as soon as the last solid part becomes liquid. You know, when the substance is shiny and almost iridescent.” Holing up his index finger just below my lashed he tells me to blink, tells me my eyelashes are soft and fluttery and how they seem to made the almond shape of my eyes almost exotic, and how the corners seemed to flicker and glisten with moisture.

*

Skin bare to the and humid air that made me hypersensitive to my body even after he left that night, after he left his mark on my breast and scratch marks along my shoulder blades.

*

I walked in the rain that day, letting it soak me, scalp tingling from the drops of water that fell in straight lines, until my hair became matted to my temples and cheekbones. Mascara smudging the skin below my eyes, I could picture in my head how I looked to those around me, dry underneath their umbrellas. But I liked to feel the rain drum my skin like fingers on a tabletop. I liked to be cleansed by the water from the sky. I could feel the second skin from earlier with him wash away to welcome a new one.

*

The wind bangs against itself outside, angry, tossing pieces of earth and debris in the air. The garbage in the dumpster outsides is spewing trash like popping corn in a microwave and the sudden urge to feel that force against my skin overpowers me and I step out onto the fire escape that its trembling under the weather’s fury. The hair that was kept out of my eyes by bobby pins now rushes around my face and in my line of vision. The bobby pins are gone, extracted from the winds grips and launched into different directions. I should hold on to the rusted railing but don’t. I want to trust my feet and knees to keep me in my place. It is a test. My shirt becomes fluid under the pressure and ripples across my bare chest and stomach, barely secreted by the now liquid fabric. A twig or maybe small rock whips across my cheek and I feel a slight cool sting and decide to go inside.

*

The pillows feel gooey underneath my pulsing skin and my head pull of static. The violent atmosphere outside strangles elective lines between is wringing hands. The light struggles for breath but dies quickly, sharply and I am left amongst my pillows. With a sweating glass of wine and the stillness of a power outage. My body is pulsing to the cicadas that are somehow still intact in the tree outside my window. There is a quick gulp of wine left that I eye before deciding to pour it over my tongue and hold it there, imbibing the taste of stillness and honeycomb.

The outside is trying to swallow me.