Audemus Dawnspark

Occupied Spaces

The night is wine: sky; drink; the sangria blossom of a bruise (hematoma) in the crook of his arm (cubital fossa) that leaves no secret about how he’s decided to spend his night. The ugly bleed of immediate color spreads at the same pace that the colors in the sides of his vision seep and waver. He laughs it away, says his vein (cephalic) rolled, and gets a sympathetic nod of ‘been there’ in return. He knows it is a lie: that he’s drunk, he’s trembling, he’s out of practice but not so much so that he had any trouble locating the stashed away needle injection kit beneath a false floorboard.

It was easy to invite her in, and even easier to strip her bare. These are familiar motions but now done in open-eyed slumber. The quality of the sounds around him and the sound of his thoughts have become delightfully muffled but he still wonders, has he chosen her for what she has offered or what she reminds him of? She is all legs (femur, tibia, fibula) and butterscotch tea scone hair but she doesn’t taste like one. There are curves where there should be flat, long planes (pectoralis major, gluteus medius) and there is nothing she can do or offer that supplants the already occupied space in his head and the dull ache in his chest (heart).