you must learn to appreciate Robert for what he is, a blind man who is more than the sun

Hunched over and pulled off a strip of white birch bark like onion skin because he laughed, apologized. Silence of skin on skin. I’d had opportunities, she said, that J. had never had because he had dedicated himself to the farm. And then I always take my first two fingers right to the skin, damp, the soap film still there, and then them down along the side of my leg, down to the bubbles, and down then further. Because you think someone might get a little drunk. In the washroom and soon my skin was rife with gooseflesh. Maybe he thought because he’d died once he was exempt from any real fear. Only J. could do anything for himself and sure enough he came stumbling out of the smoke with his pants half smoldering and his skin burned away. Gone into the cloud or was that smoke, gathered and gray.

Because my food is gone and starving cats yowl from my stoop. Because we have seen it, he will wake chained to the bed-frame. You dream your skin gone to ash—

J. exonerated for his crimes, no mention of guilt, of horror, of night-sweats for our “hero.” No mention of the heat of my skin, of the sun, of my lips upon his chest. Now the tightness of your breath as we stretched over each other, gutless skins, empty bodies, spread further, devouring, what is it you clasped? Under shifting outlines of bodies, under ticker tape, under stolen names, “on the run,” “hidden in the most absurd and childish places,” “sorcerer.”

Because it is death to live otherwise. By ‘against the law’ I mean this boy and the cool damp of their soul. Now in those days a city, a burst of light. Now a woman vibrated into her own shadow. Now no women the way he dreamed, cold lips against his neck. He woke and crawled to me from within, he, what a lit match does to canvas.

I’d told J. in the same words. Thrown to the ground, palms bloody. There was only that heat: you are dying, you begin to scream. J. knows nothing but strange fictions. Eat nothing, curl into a worm, kick if you like, drown, figureless and beneath. Scoundrels, I will shoot them in the face. Here they will make soap of you, here you are just as quickly a man with a shovel as a gull or dog, and only smoke is returned. For now legs arms nipples tongues pink painted toe nails giggles and smiles, for now dozing, shouts and moans, for now musk ducts and long teeth. J. quickened with blood and limbs. Men call out “buddy.” Men call you “buddy.” You don’t have to explain anything to me.