A Death of Something

Margaret Christi

Fall 2009

She wore a black corset, her hips shoving into the space between us with tea cup dips. He wore the black suit he’d been married in, while I wore boots of black candlestick butter that stuck to the seat.

From atop a tower we watched her, her hips still cutting, her ankles tied. Her words had tossed us where we watched her, her backside gathering bruises. Her rich olive skin burning from the outside in, fist sized blotches spreading to her thighs.

I turned and by chance caught the face of a man long gone from my past. My hair grazed his face as I leaned close and asked him his name. I felt my lips numb as I told him mine.

He had been my mother’s lover when I was young and as his hands which had hugged me slipped over his unclothed friend to bring her pleasure, I turned my head.