I.
Phantom eyelash on my fingers, wispy and fragile as the roots of a milky baby incisor.
A grin, a voice on the phone, kneading my skin like it’s dough.
A breeze through hair, wet jean cuffs trailing the pavement and arms full of shopping.
Invisible teeth on my shoulder, knuckles grazing my heart, touch haunting.
A tangerine smile between fingers, in the dark.
Sweet pine and musk rising like steam from my clothes to my nose,
tinged scarlet and shining with cold. I can see my breath in front of me.
Scent that lingers on my skin, digging its nails into my pores,Even now you’re miles away.
II.
I sit naked on the floor, spinning him snowdrops out of wool (which I seem to have plucked from thin air.)
Dislodged, uprooted, ‘lost in a forest, all alone.’
My mother’s weary voice tells me to turn Robert Smith off, to put my clothes on and buy some peonies. Things must look different to her
from where she is though, all the way at the other side of the phone.
I wake up in the night, bleary-eyed and delirious. There’s a woman with my eyes
sitting at my bedside. She is stroking the hair away from my forehead.
“You are more than a man.” She says to me.
In the morning, I hate tangerines, my toes have gone numb and I miss my mother.
“Tangerine” by árticotropical is licensed under CC BY 2.0.