Sinking Under
by Melissa A. Morgan
Dapple shade and constant traffic camouflage me as I watch your old apartment from across the street again. I tell myself that you’re inside, concealed by an oak door and fabric-blanketed window, but you don’t even live there anymore. Not that you told me.
Fingering my half-eaten cacao bar, I ache for another taste of you, one more bitter morsel. I deserve more, don’t I?
Lofty clouds saunter overhead. In the tunnel of red-brick buildings wind whips my hair, stinging my eyes. A scrap of brown paper dances, twirling into the air around the caged trash bins and crepe myrtles lining the street, and then tumbles down the sidewalk out of sight.
You called yourself a nomad. Wasn’t that the word? I guess that you could be anywhere, Shanghai or Montreal or Paris. Wherever you are, you took a slice of me with you.
But don’t let that worry you. I’m practically whole again. Only a scar here and there, the residue of us.
* * *
Your eyes flashed, a sign advertising vacancy. Come to Phaedra pulsed in red, hot light. I jumped at the invitation and basked in your warm glow, sinking in and under.
Hours turned into days. With one hand on my throat, you burrowed into me. My tongue ran down your arched spine, tracing phases of the moon rendered in black ink. Rent by tooth and nail, our flesh was ultimately soothed with kisses and climax.
We camped on my futon with a single sheet and each other to keep warm. You told me of your travels and how you spent last fall as a model for life drawing classes and now work temp jobs in construction.
“Everything is temporary, isn’t it,” you said with a wink.
I told you of my childhood in the South and how my parents shunned me when I came out to them. You said you were a wanderer and poet at heart and called me a lamb in the wilderness.
On our third morning, I awoke contorted and content to you sipping black coffee and nibbling a cacao square. Was it Tuesday or Wednesday?
“Here,” you said handing me a square of my own. “You need nourishment.” You kissed my forehead and then leaned against the doorframe. The stark white walls glowed against your chestnut hair and sun-kissed skin.
I tossed the whole thing in my mouth. Already dry, my mouth became a desert. My furrowed brows and pained face betrayed my desire to please you.
“Small bites are best,” you said as amusement gamboled across your face. You threw yourself onto the futon, and a ceiling of laughter floated above us.
I’d meet you around seven at your place, an apartment on Caster. Once considered the wrong part of town, gentrification had turned the artist lofts and low-rent flats along Caster Street into luxury apartments.
I’d missed several days of classes and three shifts at Fat Sam’s by the time I bathed you in the Caster Street apartment. I scrubbed eggshell paint from your arms and shoulders and washed your dark curls. The intoxicating smell of your rosemary shampoo and mint bodywash left me dizzy. You pinned me to the teak bench. Afterward, we ordered noodles and beef tataki for dinner. You pecked at two cacao squares for dessert. I declined your offer to share, opting for dessert beneath the stars. You were delicious.
Back and forth, your place then mine.
You fed me sprouted bread with warm brie and loganberry jam, and I washed a swath of drywall mud from your calf, revealing a ring of ornate orange and black koi. We fell together through my shower door, the one with the frosted swan, sending shards of glass and splatters of my blood to every corner of the bathroom. You mopped my tears and blood, covering my wounds in bandages and kisses. Later in bed, we imagined the conversation with my landlord and laughed like hyenas. We made milk-chocolate love, and all was right in the world.
In the deep, dark of morning you peppered my forehead with feather-soft kisses. You whispered something like, “this has been fun. I’ve got to go. You should get more sleep, Dear One.”
Night came and went without you. I wilted along with the niçoise salad that I’d prepared for us. My calls went unanswered. I took the bus to the Caster Street apartment, and a lady with loose, grey curls looked puzzled when I asked for Phaedra.
“Oh, the house-sitter? You’ll have to call the agency, Dear. We came home last night,” she said, closing the door.
* * *
The frigid concrete steps beneath me pierced my skin, sending daggers of ice up my spine. I looked at the oak door and then back at the cacao bar in my hand, taking one last nibble of the bitter chocolate before tossing it into the bin.
Melissa A. Morgan is a fiction writer living in Pontotoc, MS with her wife, Lisa. Melissa’s work has been featured in Ligeia Magazine and garnered an Honorable Mention in the 2021 William Faulkner Literary Competition.