an oil rig man and the burning of the notre-dame

Dog tags press against the lining of his shirt, words hum like concrete in summer, my leg dangles in between his knees, and the urgency of the young grasps onto me.

Why are you so certain the arms intend to harm you?

Water sputters out a rusted spout.

What?

He pulls out two cigarettes, cracks fire with them both in his mouth, brings one to mine and brushes my cheek with a knuckle that could have bruised if he wished it too.

Your dream. He continues softly. The hands which near you there. With that southern drawl. Why are you so sure they mean to injure? I pick up his steel tag. Gliding my fingers across the engraving. Smiling at the gap beneath his blood type before his fingers creep onto mine and a sternum sticky with nectar, ankles clicking when taking the stairs, and the taste of clove and cinnamon answer for me.

Landing on my chin with a silent slap, a strand of spit tears. You know nothing about the lives had there. I whisper. The grime and the ease. Liquor and ash hitting the back of my throat. The boredom and the terror- Memory catching in my voice. The terror that tenderness births.

Stroking the joint as if reading from it, his fingers caress my knees in curious sympathy. My arms outstretch across the counter and my hands hang off the edge. I think of Chile and its cherries. My index bookmarking a text with a peeling cover. The stink of air-dried sheets and burning tobacco. A voice. A voice piercing the ballad of shrieking crickets and summer quaver.

His hand tucks strands behind my ear and his pointer lingers on a mole where his eyes grow dark on the speck and his finger drags towards another. Said with a playful grin, mother warned boys would ask to kiss it. I remember laughing at that. Revealing neck and teeth and now as my thighs tighten in an effort not to wet the seat, a cynicism that both disgusted and delighted her.

You.

What the fuck do you know about me?

In the sink his fingers prune with the effort to scrub the blood from my panties. I’m still as that irreconcilable abyss of the image of myself and the reality of my corporeal flesh is toiled over without disgust. I’m still as water burns my back and my underwear is hung on a wire long enough to host just that. When he steps in with me, I am still as well. My hands grasp his jaw and my mouth works but I am still in it all. When his fingers hover above my brow. When they turn and graze me like something delicate and finally found. When our lips crash and lungs gasp for air, head bowed to the shower head, eyes wide for the drain and the filth it swallows with only a moan, I am still, bruised and yelping for more.

Tight against his chest, half limp, underneath the covers, he tells me about a place where water runs clear through the channels. Where people know your name but prefer adjectives. A place where linens dry by rays and the words let go or be dragged hum and then grow into a shout. The line “We only become what we are by radically negating what others have done to us.”¹ melting wax wings, engraved herein.

1. The Wretched of the Earth, Preface by Jean-Paul Sartre, lvii, Frantz Fanon