Movement

by Vyxz Vasquez

He never lived old enough for me to have my own room, in danger of getting caught by a cousin who forgot to bring her keys or the landlord back from the market— never had just a room with sunlit sheets, naked under the covers, a languid display of taut skin, fingertips hovering, learning how our bodies worked, his eyes fleeing borders of life, as if those exact tentative careful touches before we stretched, our feet cold that our lips stayed locked, have remained in the semi-darkness of this living room, sixteen years after the fact of his death, always in danger of being caught in soft tangle of memory and grief-relief, as clear as his breath on my neck, no one coming back, stuck in the cushions of a sofa I make, believe is his embrace.