“Then hurt me.”

I know what you meant. That doesn’t change the fact that I wanted to put cigarettes out on your fingertips. Or how I wanted to dig my fingernails into your jaw. I wanted to sign my name in your skin, to compose an invitation. Painfully, indelibly.

“Then hurt me.”

Your voice no longer registered as clearly. There was cross-chatter, feedback, background static. Under your voice, I heard playback of older tracks.

Your previous invitations.

Ghosts of those low guttural noises I drew from your throat when you laid underneath me.

“Then hurt me.”

I have a photograph of you after you had a haircut.

With all that hair out of the way, you could get a better look at your neck. And on your neck, those pinched, pink, irritated teeth marks, slowly darkening and scabbing over.

I remember the fervor, the tempest. I remember the tufts of hair falling into your lap.

“Then hurt me.”

It’s amazing how your intonation is the same every time. Maybe it’s those words. Those grainy, anachronic words. They can only sound the same from between your teeth.

Oh no.

So here we are on riverbanks and docks. Here we are yesterday, yesterday, yesterday.

The smell of burning film makes you light-headed, so you told me you wouldn’t come over. I bought a new box of matches and a disposable camera. I wanted to take you apart as many times as I could.

“Then,”

You never paused. You never stammered or hesitated. Your voice was always steady even after your cover was blown.

“hurt,”

And when I would stumble, you would tilt your head back sweetly and wait. You would bare your throat like that’s what I really was. You were waiting for my long thin claws.

“me.”

But it wasn’t.

And you weren’t sacrificial.

You were new.