Up in the attic before bed. Putting the bones into the brass dish along with the others, six or seven dozen: femurs, vertebrae, ribs, some brown and brittle, others, like tonight’s, fresh, a pure dry white. He puts the dish at the head of the mattress, pulls the curtain over the window. The room turns to velvet. Softest black. For a while there isn’t anything in his head. The sound of the creek, the occasional cry of a whip-poor-will, a nightingale. Xie turns on his side. Puts his fingers in the dish. Imagine. A single white curve. The horizon of a skull against the velvet. How smooth it would be, if you put your mouth against it, drew your lips to the crest of the brow, tongued the deep sockets, inhaled the scent of the wafer-thin walls of the nasal cavity, more delicately, numerously chambered than a beating heart. Kissed each loose tooth. Licked the entire length of the jaw, slowly bit the arch of the cheek. You imagine everything, as the void peels away from the body bone by bone: skull, spine, clavicle, ribs, hips, thighs, knees, shins, feet, you go as slow as you can. Hands against every hollow, every curve. How quiet it would be. How quiet it is. Alone with it. You turn your mouth into the pillow. Lift your knee against the sheet. Your hips against its hips. Your mouth against its mouth. Whatever movement might be possible, without hurting it, you’d learn, you’d know, it would tell you, show you. How it fucks you. How you fuck it. Making sense of your own flesh. You spread your arm across the mattress but there is no body to embrace. There never will be. And you fall straight through the ceiling into sleep on this thought and even the velvet does not catch you, you just fall and fall.