LET ME IN

You smell like smoke, like a furnace, a tar pit or the scorched patch pocket on my favorite cardigan, and when I reach for your lips you pull away because there are things you store and visions you’ve had that shouldn’t be repeated.  Last night, for instance, you mumbled his name in your sleep again.  The window was cracked open and a gull stuck the twilight with its wounded wail so that I had to fight to hear whether yours was bliss or torture, if you were mating or missing him, kissing or killing him, making up or martyring for the simple sake of self-pity.

This morning you come out of the shower wet but you still smell like smoke, like a forest fire, like charred S‘mores or a self-immolated monk.  We saw that special once.  On the green couch with the busy paisley pattern lumpy on the ends.  We cuddled and cried and huddled and you asked me over and over, “How?  How?  How could anyone possibly light themselves on fire?”

You sprits perfume and dab a thin layer of clay-looking foundation but you still smell like smoke, like burnt rubber, torch fumes and the sharp, rank tang of singed flesh.  Your heels are high and pointed spears.  You can put someone’s eye out with one.  You could puncture a chest, shatter a windshield, dig a hole and hide, but you don’t.  You seethe.

When you come home from work you reek of smoke, like a belching kiln or crude incinerator.  Kissing you is like licking an ashtray, bitter and ripe and hot.  When I pull away, your mouth hangs open, a rictus, a barren cave or a silent scream.  I wave a hand across your stare-struck eyes but you do not blink so I hoist myself up onto the curb of your lips, steadying myself with a hand balanced against your teeth. 

I call your name and hear it echoed back, the syllables smoke-tinged.  I step across your tongue.  Your tonsil bell is a smoldering stump, glowing molten.  I lean over the rim, peering through the opening of your throat.  I can see the flames down below, the fire red-black and gleaming, just getting started inside of you, and when I punch my chest and scream, “How?  How dare you?” you do not hesitate.  You swallow me whole.

(Len Kuntz lives on a lake in rural Washington State with rural sea creatures.  His work appears in places like Mud Luscious, Clutching At Straws, Amphibi.us and also at  lenkuntz.blogspot.com).