When I first saw him, his eyes were closed. They opened one after the other, like wind waving through the trees. He was singing, but he wasn’t the one they were listening to. I could only tell by watching how his lips stuck together and spread the little syllables over his mouth like jam. Singing, you got the ways of a devil sleeping in a lion’s den. Sticky seeds and stringy whispers, like a nose bleed, like pomegranate seeds.
Everything he did was quiet. I watched him under eyelashes like peering through the dying vines of the Savanna. I don’t remember who got up first. When I felt the doorknob against my back, he asked me if I was Spanish, Mexican, Latino. That skin, he said. It can’t be from this cold place. It can’t be the same skin that blushes and pales, the same skin that throws bombs like footballs, the same skin that gets paid for being skin. It’s the same, the same skin I always forget I live in, have the privilege to forget I live in. I said “Yes” anyway.
He tried to peel through the grass, tried to sneak up on me. As if the sun shone on him first – followed him into summer, into restaurant bathrooms, into the lives of long afternoons and starving eyes, closed again, one after the other. I know because I felt his lashes against my jaw. He chittered something and then a huh? huh? I couldn’t hear. I said “Yes” anyway.
He tried to make his hands into the shape of my hip, my neck, tried to turn me into a bomb, like a football, knuckles blush and pale. Mistook a growl for a purr. All vibrations sound the same. His syllables turned harsh, no longer jam, rather the knife still sticky. I pounced. His head just missed the sink. Lips bleed. Nose bleed. Pomegranate seeds.
No, no, I take it back-
He opened his eyes, one after the other. When my hair tickled his face, he shook his head against the orange and olive tiles, looked like he was feeling rain for the first time. But I knew rain. I knew the instantaneous relief, holy holy lips bleed, tongue lapping the air, almost desperate, like singing in public, holy holy pomegranate seeds. This wasn’t rain. This was drowning. I knew drowning. I knew how my lungs felt like my heart, breathing and beating indistinguishable. How it felt like neither were there. How I smelled after, like piss and battery acid. How my skin felt after, more blue than bronze, more reptile than mammal, no longer hot hot hot but cold blooded as the temperature dropped, unable to look at myself and afraid of touch, nose bleed.
Everything was quiet again. Back out, the way I inched in. I knew his eyes opened again and closed again, one after the other. Knew I smelled like piss and battery acid. Knew he still expected the sun to wake him up, even as the door slammed against the bottoms of his shoes. I could hear him under the door, you give me the blues, no longer pomegranate but persimmon, I wanna lay down and die. Knew my skin was turning blue.
Both small and feral, Gabrielle Gilbert is a junior writing major at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY.
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–Art by Menerva Tau