on layover

I called jules, because the inadequate latte I’d purchased moments before tasted like cough syrup -- still too hot for consumption, because I couldn’t stay awake, and because I needed to tell someone that I felt like a cavern. Not the origin of an echo, but where it might get stuck and reverberate into eternity. Not empty, but a kind of hollow. As if the slightest amount of outside pressure, might leave me crushed like eggshells under feet. Like eyelashes against my skin.

Where are you? He asked through the hum of static and distant jet planes.
Somewhere between you and the devil.
There’s not a lot of room to move there.
I’ve just realized.

He asked me to take another flight. To divert life for the confines of his familiar arms, lips, hands, moments. The words smiled through the digital cross-connects and bit into my skin like sharp feral teeth. He couldn’t have known that he was only just making things worse. Reminding me that I constantly make my life about damaging, disastrous, and specious choices. But I was too tired to keep my eyes trained on the violence of Blood Meridian. I’d rather listen to this and instead of answering, I told him so.

Until the final boarding call, he whispered to me in a voice like fractured sea foam. About soft lingering things like lips on skin. Eye lashes and cool morning sheets. Sanctity. Deference. The eucharist of bodies. Fingertips and rain. Secrets and collusion.