As soon as his father is in bed Xie is out the door. Lightest wind against his neck. Quick over the mossed log on the stream, through the fence, jump into the soft dirt of the bank and up. Feet snapping through the undergrowth. Full moon. Hands out to feel the trees as he passes, gentle slap against the trunks, fingers slipping over the dark knots in the white wood. Birch eyes. Watching you. Boy in trashed jeans, hood up, a mile in ten minutes. Breathless. Brush of leaves against his face. The light from the church a gem on the slender branches, brighter and brighter, until. There. Deep hush inside. Candles lit, flames straight, white wax piled on the iron shelf beneath the painting of the Virgin, her eyes averted. He takes the key. Open the cabinet. Some sweet scent. All around. Palm to the wood, then to the glass. Warm. Let me look at you. The skull’s cool grin. Nest of gold. Look, then. So quiet. The way it grows around you, this space, the air, time itself, as if you are something. Harmless. Belonging. Here. Cheek against the case, both hands, hips. A burning. Delicious. Rocking against the glass, small tide in your body, building, no one can see you, it is you who are seeing, who can see, how beautiful he is, how right you always were, about this, to want it, the shape of the body the shape of desire itself. Then a sigh, not yours; a caress, gliding up your spine:

Beloved.

Not a dream. His voice. From above, from below. Xie jerks back, staring. The face in the case the same, the body the same, not moving but something is moving. Inside and out. The sudden heat, the smell of bone, of earth, the stone, the moon against the windows, and P. like all these things; a fact. Xie turns his back on the body, palms to his eyes, panting. Will it hurt you? The air contracts, gathering everything to a single unbearable point, in your head or outside of it, it doesn’t matter. Look at me, beloved. You are not imagining it. It is imagining you. Xie opens his eyes. Whatever you see when you turn will ravish you, destroy you. He turns. As slow as he can. Look. P. waiting. Luminous. Being. Xie shakes so hard his teeth snap down on his tongue, blood at the back of his throat. Whimper bouncing off stone. You could go out, now. Shut up the body, key in the lock, the door closing behind you, why not. Imagine life wandering off in a direction other than the one before you. But you don’t imagine. You get on your knees. Head and hands against the glass. Flesh humming beneath that dark gaze. Close your eyes. Hard swallow. I’m here.

You come every night, all night, one week, two, living only at the edges of every moment spent elsewhere; in the library with Karen, at the meetings with FKK, at the table with your father, even in the woods you are waiting to be with the body. Knees black from kneeling. At the glass falling asleep for seconds at a time, sublime exhaustion, the night an infinite cocoon. The voice doesn’t come again but you sense it, all around. Waiting as you are waiting. The idea takes shape inside you, wordless; you don’t need the voice to tell you what it wants, what it demands. You know how to break a pane of glass. How to hide your face. How much this body weighs: one hundred pounds of metal but only fifteen pounds of bone.