bizarre.
âHarder,â I begged.
She took my head in her hands as if I had been beheaded, she drove her tongue into my mouth. She wanted us wasted, lacerating. We were tearing each other to pieces with stone needles. The kiss slowed in my guts, it vanished, a hot current in the sea.
âAgain.â
âFor ages.â
We stopped kissing, lay down and, phalanx to phalanx, we charged our finger bones with what we didnât know to say to each other.
Isabelle coughed and our interlaced fingers went silent.
âLet yourself go,â she said.
She kissed the points of my collar, the red braid on my nightgown, she molded the bounty of our shoulders. Her careful hand traced lines over my lines, curves upon my curves. I glimpsed the halo of my revived shoulder, I listened to the light in her caress.
I stopped her.
âLet me go on,â said Isabelle.
Her voice lingered, her hand sank into the covers. I felt the shape of Isabelleâs neck, shoulder, and arm along my neck, encircling my shoulder, the length of my arm.
A flower opened in every pore of my skin. I took her arm and thanked her with a purple kiss upon the veins.
âYou are kind, you are good,â I said.
âYou say I am good!â
âWhat can I do for you?â
The poverty of my vocabulary discouraged me. Isabelleâs hands were shaking, they were adjusting a muslin corselette over the fabric of my nightgown: her hands were shaking with a maniac fervor.
She sat up on the bed, seized my waist. Isabelle rubbed her cheek against mine, she told a comforting tale with her cheek. She dropped her hands to my chest. We listened to the meowing of a cat in the main courtyard.
Isabelleâs fingers opened, closed again like daisy buds, they freed breasts from rose-shaded purgatory. I was waking into spring with the babbling of lilacs under my skin.
âCome, come here again,â I said.
Isabelle stroked my hip. My skin caressed became a caress; stroked, my hip shone through my intoxicated limbs into my languid ankles. It was torture, tiny tortures, in my belly.
âI canât go on.â
We waited, we kept a sharp lookout for the shadows.
I took her in my arms but I did not embrace her as I wanted in that narrow bed, I did not engrave her in me. A peremptory little girl appeared:
âI want, I want.â
I want what she wants, if the creeping octopus would leave me, if stars would stop shooting down my limbs. I await a flood of stones.
âCome back, come back . . .â
âYou arenât helping me,â said Isabelle.
The hand advanced under the fabric. I listened to the handâs coolness; it listened to my skinâs heat. The finger explored where the two cheeks touch. It entered the gap,came out again. Isabelle caressed the two cheeks at once with one hand. My knees, my feet were crumbling away.
âItâs too much. I tell you itâs too much.â
Indifferent, Isabelle stroked quickly, on and on.
It was torment, it was hot prickling. Isabelle fell forward onto me.
âAre you happy?â
âYes,â I say, dissatisfied.
She slipped into bed, laid her cheek on my belly; she listened to her child, for it was there that my heart was beating. I held out my arm, reached her face, her mouth, her hair so far from mine, my body was calmly wretched:
âCome back. Iâm alone.â
â. . .â
The weight of the head that slipped into my crotch was frightening.
She was coming back, she was offering me a kiss with her good girlâs lips on mine.
Isabelle clawed at the fabric over my pubic hair, she entered, withdrew, while not entering and not withdrawing; she rocked me, her fingers, the fabric, the time.
âAre you happy?â
âYes Isabelle.â
My politeness annoyed me.
Isabelle persevered differently, one monotonous finger on a single lip. My body took on the light of that finger as sand takes up water.
âLater,â she said, into