were you at the funeral? (collaboration)

My art teacher said that she sat and watched her very first watercolour painting disappear, day by day, right off of the cherry frames of her dimmed bedroom.

I watched you, day by day, fall away from me, like someone had miscalculated the dimmer switch on the bedroom light, turning it too far. Beyond romance and into darkness.

You never told me of your other lovers.

I cut myself shaving the other day while fumbling with my black tie in my pressed shirt and boxers, not comical ones with hearts on them, but just normal, solid, washed out boxers. And you were sitting in the bedroom, dressing up the lacings of your corset, smashing your so-so breasts up and together, and pressing against your organs so they collided with your heart like a New York car accident.

My art teacher said things are always more than they appear. You appear to me so much it's hard to imagine how much more you are.

You're putting on your stockings now, with your ruffled garters snapping in place. I couldn't help myself from thinking it was the cracking of marionette limbs, pulling out reluctantly like springs on a Polish mattress grinding against the small of your back.
And now I'm watching you pivot your hips in front of the full-length mirror you insisted I buy and install on the back of the closet door. Watching you watching yourself, I am hostaged by the urge to ravage you, snap-by-snap, zip-by-zip, button-to-button, to peel off those stockings, watch them fall limp off your calves.

I swear that I saw you at the funeral that day, all lilies and crucifixes and plastic tears.

And I swear that I saw you behind my back that night before, swear I felt you take your hand and cup-swipe my chin. I swear I watched you wash the toothpaste spittle from your bristle-count fingers. And, as the same as before, all slender and feathery, though not butterfly feathery, but acid-rain feathery, with your nails done up in glitter and teeth down in jagged points.

You never told me of your other lovers. There were - two others? And each of them saw your skin, taut like stretched canvas, waiting for that first stroke, that first violent punch, that first irrevocable mistake?

You see me watching you watch yourself and grin, though without showing your teeth, you don't show your teeth when you do that, just glossy vampiric red skin. And you turn on your heel and lean over toward me, chin jutted up, making harsh isosceles triangles with your collarbones. My eyes flutter closed and watch you like a fly through the bars of a Venus fly trap, all jittery and distorted.

When they open, I find a lipstick smear on my door frame and your shoes off my porch.

Later I would sink my mouth deep into your neck, inhale the impossible smell of your skin, stiff then with theatre powder and sweat, like acrylic paint plastic peel-worthy on paper.

And I would murmur: Were you there? At the funeral?

Sometimes I wonder if you're dissociating, with your limbs stretched out all too long and your joints creaking and cracking. And sometimes I wonder if your wiry mess of hair is snaring on my buttons, twisting about and snapping out from your head. And sometimes I wonder if your eyes, glassy and dead, are running hairline whispers of decay through my ears.

Those so young as you should not already rust. You twinge, your eyelids fail. Not the same as before: Pale and pink, though not livid pink, but tear-stain pink. Now: caught-in-the-bathroom-fingers-coiling- your-pubic-hair pink, a scalded-thighs pink. A vigorous clean pink, bleeding gums and toothpaste fizzy pop fading pink.
I keep finding your hair caught in the buttons of my pressed shirts.

Inquiring: How did you know I was here?

And you were sitting on my couch, white lace and ivory plastic, with your collar running satin over your segmented skin. Segmented like a worm.

I had to keep myself from saying: I heard your joints rattling.

My art teacher said art is a visual language. You speak of numb back aches and weaselled-in organs.

Instead I said: How was it?

Chirping: Good.

And then: Want me to come to the bedroom?

Mostly: Yes

But: Your bones are breaking and things fall from your suddenly black-hole pores, shaking. A whole mortality in one orgasm.

And: I will bury my mouth into your neck, still un-severed.

And.

Were you there at the funeral?

Softly: Yes.

Surprised: You were?

Sadly: I was underneath the flowers.

And.

Today I.

Paint you opening your.

Chest. Showing me the pin pricks safe from your other lovers.

My art teacher was right: Each face has every colour.

But what would the teacher have to say about the monochromatic pinkness of your plastic foil neck?

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