I lay on my bed. A barren desert before me. How do I move through this tundra? I take a deep breath. Here it goes. Here I go. My knees waver like jelly in the air. So uncertain. I take another deep breath. This time I’m going to do it. I reach my hand, finger the mound. More like a mountain than a mound; an unsurpassable trench. How did I ever do this before? My fingertips run through the hair, in a combing motion. Maybe I should turn back. It’s been so long. Some things are better left unsaid. My hand keeps searching for something. What am I even looking for? It’s so deep and dark and incomprehensible over on that side. The ceiling melts over me in exasperation. Maybe if I stare harder, it’ll happen. What did I used to call it? A hunger? Gravitational pull of the soul? I can’t get past it, my mountain, my molehill. I dig a little deeper; nothing. No response. Dry and unyielding. It seems like decades have passed since I knew what it felt like.

Maybe I never knew. Maybe the memories are hallucinations, remembrances of past lives of decadent mistresses. The words dare not leave my lips. Only breath escapes me. My hand has no direction; no guide. Where can it be; my oasis. It’s too late. I knew it. A hot, sweaty, wave of humiliation runs through me. I was so foolish. Those memories are long gone. Flashes of bedroom scenes flit through my pupils. Laying there, on the bed, lips ajar, head slightly back. Who was she? I move my fingers deeper; folds, creases. Is there titanium down there? Stone cold. Only the mound rustles with the movement of my body. My body. Oh God, is it really mine? Unclothed, how can I own up to it? It feels like a foreign object, slipped on over my head; like an uncomfortable fabric. Lips ajar, head back, sighing, moaning. She was laying there; a contorted acrobat, mid trapeze jump. Underneath, squirming, every night in the dark. All those men. My fingers are unforgiving, hurtful even. They move slowly and then quickly, but it isn’t it useless? My limbs seem detached, laying there, in a dull stupor. When is it okay to give up? Her lips ajar, her head bent, back in a classic Roman arch. Her body seemed a bionic miracle. Now spread out like an eagle, now crouching like a tigress. What has happened to me? I look out into a void. But she, she performed magic. Only her shadow could do her justice. All those men. Their shadows would blend, bleed, bend together. They would twist into figure eight knots, and then disperse, like ashes. Sticks rubbing against one another, wood against wood. Gray hissing sparks shooting everywhere. Writhing, howling shadows. Her mouth released animalistic shrieks, expanding and contracting on the wall, against the light. Sometimes they were one and others, two. The dark reflection of her soul lit on fire; it performed frantic leaps through time and space. She didn’t live in the tundra. She had never known the flesh-burning cold of the steppe.

I moved my hips, gyrated them against my clammy palm. Oh God, oh my God, do I feel something? Is there life on Mars? I held my breath, feeling, feeling something. Something primitive. I was dissolving slowly, with all the tension collected in the air; many days and months and years of tension. My fingers slid down a slippery slope, up and down, oh my God. My thoughts felt scrambled. How could I even try to piece them to one another? I experienced a tingling in my joints. Had I been assembled once again? Were my clumsy, awkward extremities fitting together like a jigsaw? I quickened my pace, taking long, deep glides, top to bottom, bottom to top. My body heaved; my body. Top to bottom; bottom to top. Oh, and again. My fingers performed with ease, pressing, pushing, reaching. I reached lower and lower, past my mountain or molehill, past my former desert. I was invincible, dissolving against the candle flame into a dark contour-less mess. I felt the wetness, the warm inviting pull of my torso. Lips ajar, head back.