Buried Affections
by marklar klepac
We have wrestled on this rocky mound for what seems like years, her stale, steady breaths tear the leaves from my branches, and ease me forward into a trance. Her grip like roots latching onto a cheap casket as I’m handed down into her soiled depths, forced as it seems, into this sweet place of fertility. Caught in this moment, a suspended bead of sweat, perspiration bleeds out of me like formaldehyde, I descend lower and lower into longing, into her depths, the depths of She -ol. Her teeth, her tenacious blades of love ripped through my clothing, the abrasion too much for the tiny fibers of my ironed carcass to endure. The frail sheet bent and moaned beneath the weight of our mortal dance. Her fingers slid into the creases of my flesh, seeking a structure to abide in, sending a deep stiffness into my delicate bones. The frost of her touch, an anchor pulling me under jagged, frigid waves. Her quiet whispers like the last shortened breaths of a drowning man’s lungs, escaping through lips sewn shut. Her skin shifted and sank like a shipwreck and buried my body, that was laid out, exposed like a smooth crack in a decaying tree revealing its rings for the pleasure of the observer. Her final stand, her one last move lingering among the ants, the worms, the snails, waiting for her call to beckon us into oneness forever.
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