The Place Where We Began

CarrieEsposito

The metallic tang of blood and that white bathroom: the smell of cleaning fluid and my own. The metal bar which I don’t touch is cold. I am living in a concentration of the present where I do one cautious, conscious thing and then another. On repeat: a replay of my body's expulsion, a frenzy of voices Now a sterile tenuous quiet.

her body out there, separated yet so close she will always be so close

Things happen in steps now: squirt from the bottle, a gentle patting the crinkle of plastic opening, the satisfying stick to mesh a comfort somehow, the way it catches my discharge protecting me from draining away, freely leaking like my mammalian nipples aching to nourish the collection of fragile bone and miniature organs depending on me for survival even as I tend softly, longingly, briefly to the inside-out feeling of my skin.

Soon too soon we will leave this in-between place. We will wear clothes and go to restaurants, see family and make coffee and clean the kitchen. But every twenty something days, when the elemental smell rises I will be back when everything I had was within reach when nothing yet was known of who we would be, together.

Carrie Esposito’s work has been published in The Georgia Review, Ruminate Magazine, Monkey Bicycle, The MacGuffin, King Ludd’s Rag by Malarkey Books, Pif Magazine, Everyday Fiction, Mused, and the 4th edition of the Ms. Aligned anthology. She has a selected short featured on The Short Story Today podcast. Her first personal essay is forthcoming in Litro Magazine, and she has poetry published in Porcupine Literary and Nostalgia Press. Carrie is working on her novels, short stories, and poetry, and she is an Educational Consultant for Teaching Matters in the New York City schools. You can find her on Twitter @CarrieBEsposito and on her website www.carrieesposito.com.