Luckily I’m smarter than the dots.

I know where they’ll lead me.

Right into the basement.

So I scatter them.

Coincidences scattered in the wind.

There’s a monster in the basement and I’m not going down there again.

15

He hit me.

And I wanted more.

Hard-knuckled fist smashing against my face.

I don’t stand a fighting chance.

Pickled pink in rye whiskey.

I called him out.

Out into the street.

At least this way he’ll touch me.

Grab me. Beat me.

It’s snowing.

I slip in the street.

But he holds me up by the shirt just so he can knock me down again.

Jaw hits asphalt.

Crimson in the dirty snow.

I smile.

He’s calling me up for more.

And I want it.

More than anything. More than her.

He doesn’t understand that.

Maybe never will.

I didn’t care about his stupid drunk girlfriend.

I kissed her because she wanted to.

Because I could.

Because what’s wrong with taking a little more?

I felt nothing.

Until he walked in the room.

That’s when the fireworks went off.

Always did.

Couldn’t explain it to myself.

My guts twisted when I saw him.

I stand up slowly and turn to face him again.

I haven’t got one good hit in.

Hurting him would crush me inside.

I just want him to crush my outside.

Hit me. Touch me.

Love me again with your fist and I’ll be yours forever.

Black and blue and he’s on top.

Someone pulls him off.

“No!”

Don’t make him stop.

He won.

But so did I.

We both did.

29

Karen Carpenter’s voice.

Like a river of lube.

It’s a compliment, I assure you.

He’s kissing me.

And whispers, being together is like church, it’s a Holy experience.

Sacrilege.

But that’s how he understands it and I understand him.

Which is what makes us so imperfectly perfect.

A gentle giant is cradling me and it tastes like the edge of a knife.

It smells like sweet fruit on the precipice of tumbling over the mountaintop and into an acrid valley.

Because Goliath and David may never be together.

Not really.

On the battlefield one cannot know the other.

They are separate and that is the way of the world.

Tomorrow David will fill a leather pouch with stones.

The Giant will wield his club ferociously.

But here in the sanctity of night they are one.

And Karen Carpenter is singing about birds appearing

and they are close.…

21

Just a little too much whiskey.

For both of us, I reckon.

Funny how it starts with sips

And ends in gulps.

Home for the holidays

and I haven’t seen him in two years.

Those eyes.

They still make me shudder inside.

When he looks at me.

I’ve always felt it was different;

the look, that is.

The one he reserved for me.

Polite.