Sculptures of Sinew and Sin

Animals searching for acceptance in the abandoned house of their bodies.

She was good at being the tease. But her 22 year old wanting was a hunger she had no clue how to satiate, even after being given unfettered access to her desire, in the form of a 19 year old husband.

Her first time we were in a quaint little rental house up the New England coast. There were flowers in bloom in the yard when they arrived. A little porch with chairs and side table greeted them as they walked up the stairs through the bent over tall grasses of the late summer day.

Upstairs after opening all the presents they drew a bath in the giant claw foot tub. Basking in the luxury of using someone else’s hot water. She is sure there was dinner and talking but there was no remembrance of sliding the chairs under the table as they finished. She only recalls Lori Petty’s white hair and red lipstick in Tank Girl on the TV in the background of the darkness and how it all felt like a fever dream. Slick with sweat and confusion having not been allowed to talk about sex let alone slide hands down her own pants, or his. They were forbidden fruit. Unpicked, wasted on the vine.

She sang with Courtney Love, on the way to church

“I want to be the girl with the most cake.

I love him so much it turns to hate.

I fake it so real, I am beyond fake.

Someday you will ache like I ache.”

He was born an old man, sitting with a bow in his back, permanently leaning forward into his giant hands, colossal heaviness never allowing him to lift up fully. He was a beautiful broken thing. Full of bright glints in his obsidian dark. A wonder and a weight. Something to hold softly in your hands, but know that his shards were too many to be repaired. Eventually they would slice you open and disintegrate into dust.

His heart beat silently inside a sealed box. Hidden from everyone, most of all himself, safe from harm. She felt it, on occasion, come to life as she watched him light up. At the baby bunny he put in his sweatshirt pocket the night they took her home with them. Or when she would catch his stare at ten am on a Friday. A tear in time where his giant sky blue eyes gave her the truth of his soul, an aching to be seen, to be loved.

They were God‘s children, young bodies sculpted of sinew and sin. Born of the evils of sexual appetites, a curse to be cured of by white men in suits. Lived in several states together, north, south, anger, and sex. Pinkish light barely making it through thick curtains lit their bedroom. Room where they splashed their souls across the walls again and again and again. Resolute in their drive to patch over the holes in the drywall of their barely held together existence. Animals searching for acceptance in the abandoned house of their bodies.

Winds shifted to the east and she walked by his sleeping frame, the perfection of his form a fear freshly painted on her canvas. He only wanted her hand to brush his cheek. Then devour him. Kept her hands to herself for too long. Abandoned him while standing in the kitchen trying to figure out dinner. A memory etched in fragments of foolishness and regret.

They’d name their daughter Raven if they had one. But she shriveled in her womb. A blessing she instinctively felt alongside keeping the secret and the perpetual haunting grief just for herself.

Upon return to their 4th floor apartment with the fold down ironing board and a perfect ocean view they found flies infesting the room from rotting trash his brother left behind. An omen for their future. A prophecy they flamed with gasoline and the pages of her bible. She tried to leave. She tried to come back. Following her bloodthirsty need. One that he had no hope of hydrating.

Caught up with him one night at the bar after years passed. They sat on top of the picnic table out back and talked, sharing a cigarette. She showed him the cello cleft tattoo and let his hands find her soft places in the night. Stayed put while he answered the door, and made quick work of exchanging brown power for cash. Pretending herself blind. Started the car engine before the light came up. Wondered how long he’d live.

They had sucked each other dry in vampiric dreams of a form of daylight that didn’t exist. His curls dyed raven black and his darkness pushing him further under the cold soil, til the day he never lifted up for air again.

His heaviness so complete she foresaw it crushing him years before he finally hung himself. She wondered if his heart was finally set free in his final moment.

Someday, you will ache like I ache.