Why do you still sleep with the girls from the Third Ward? Am I not enough for you? Am I not all sweet gum & butterfly? says Kiko to her lover, Hoshi, a girl with big gluey teeth, wide sweeping eyes that seem to say You can enter but you might never leave.
Kiko sashays to the bed, lifts Hoshi’s chin so their eyes meet in oblique love. She bends over, kisses the traverse scar along Hoshi’s forehead. You love them because they are dangerous because there is something that you cannot keep. . . Because, sister, you are so damaged. Forgive me, for saying it.
Hoshi stares past Kiko, into the swirl of snow outside the window. She is still shivering from the chill of subways, from the stare of double-edged girls, envious of pedestrian princesses. In broken chain links of five to seven, they hang out in front of Tower Records.
I’m addicted to their sweet poisons, says Hoshi. Yours is nicotine & too much meaning. I love it when their bodies, so white, rise in the night. I lie there stunned, unable to pull them back. I love to listen to the aftermath of their words, who has cut & dragged them & why. After we make love, the beetles in my glass jar tell me that sex with strangers will make me live longer.
Kiko embraces Hoshi, snuggles beside her so their lips face similar vanishing points.
& what do the beetles say about me? asks Kiko.
Hoshi swallows hard. The cold air in the room feels hard. Someone could cry murder & not be heard.
They tell me that someday you will hurt me the way no one ever has.
They both close their eyes, their foreheads now touching. Hoshi says she is so tired, wants to go to bed. Kiko whispers in Hoshi’s ear that the world is only for the two of them.
That night, Kiko wakes up, feels a strange presence in the room. Is someone watching? She turns over. Hoshi is sleeping, her face a white forgetfulness. Perhaps she is dreaming about the Third Ward Girls.
The moon is at the window. It is a full moon and it is peeping in. Kiko thinks it must have watched them wake up a thousand times, make love, cry, cry for the other & come up with incompatible fragments of their lives based on Fantasy Girl-to-Lonely Girl stories.
She rises, trudges over, closes the shades.
Photo Source: whateva, myLot
