or when I grow it out, he weaves his red sinews into my braids. He wears my grandmother’s fur coats and guides my hand as I paint, I can feel myself becoming more hollow, with every fragile step I take I am surprised when I feel my foot hit the ground. He is Buddy Willard and Esther both, he is Humbert and Dolores and even Nabokov, he uses my blood to ink the words on the pages I read. And I let him, I let him sometimes. I let him guide my limbs and dress me like a baby at a christening, I let him rest inside the cavity of my body when I sleep, he watches my red insides, and he paints pictures of this body landscape— red and green and brown. And I smile sometimes, feeling him behind my shoulder. As I get older he grows with me, he watches me watch the minutes and he watches me watch my wrinkles. He is the hand drawing my crow’s feet with a scalpel when I look in the mirror. When I birth my alien baby I can smell the scent of red rot, veins and roots of pungence, but in the middle of it all she is pure and clean, the spot of vinegar in a puddle of oil. She has slimy grey scales, and no lipsticks or hems, and he cannot see her yet.
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