In the mirror I see two bodies standing facing each other, naked except for booty shorts and socks – we both seem to be wearing shirts, but it’s the ink on our skin – fingertips resting on each other’s forearms, bellybuttons touching. Knee-high socks. Our faces are tilted as if we’re about to kiss.
A lip piercing (lower lip, on the right), a piercing in my tongue and bellybutton. Tiny holes like secret messages.
To motivate myself, I bought a reusable water bottle that feels soft. I like things that can grow warm. Filling up. Engorged. Pulsing.
I choose fingers that can play the piano.
In the mirror I see the colourful flora that starts at your shoulder, runs down your bicep, across your elbow ditch to your ribcage and across your hips, blooming on your butt.
One finger under the waistband of your shorts.
I prefer clothes grown soft with age.
Boyish girls who want to talk about Stephen Hawking; long-haired, vegan, indie-rocker girly boys.
I smell your hair as you lean your forehead against my shoulder. I can’t hear what you’re saying. Your hair smells like a wet, dark primeval forest. We should wrap a blanket around ourselves. I remember wading into the sea on the island of Kos and the water being surprisingly cold for the time of year. Shoulders scrunched up high, step by step. I hugged myself, breathed in gasps, let out involuntary snorting noises. When the water came up to my thighs, I plunged forwards into the cold, furiously breast-stroking until I no longer felt sand beneath my feet. I closed my eyes to be more aware of the water molecules being warmed up by my body and forming a glassy layer of insulation around me. Just as long as I remained motionless. Don’t move! You answer by pressing your forehead even harder into my shoulder. Please don’t move.
Exhaling into a mouth that inhales and exhales into a mouth.
In the mirror I see two bodies on a bed, one lying on its stomach, the other in child’s pose. The reclining body is looking in the mirror at your folded body – where is the dream that you’re in right now set? The palo santo smoke curls upward in the air. Filtered sunlight comes in through the curtain. A thin line of shadow runs from your bellybutton down into your pubic hair. Your hands are open. There’s something fragile and Eastern about you with your closed eyelids. There are two bowls on the bedside table, the turquoise glazing cracked like a shattered mirror. It’s impossible to resist the temptation of touching it to see if you can feel the fault lines. The primordial smell of the burning wood. You see in the mirror how the reclining body sits up on the edge of the bed, the half-erect shaft between its legs. The second body, in child’s pose, eyes open now, smiling. Completely at peace. Leaning back on the bed, I can see the vertebrae on your back. The side of your breast. The erect nipple. I inhale deeply. My hand around the shaft. Exhale deeply. Without looking at me, you slide off the bed. As if you’re starting to melt, you slide between my knees, crouching. You wrap your arms around my hips. The taut muscles in your shoulders, your back, your bent lower back, your calves. Toes wide, feet firmly planted on the floor.
Moving on your haunches. You look over your shoulder at me watching you in the mirror. How you twist and coil around me. As if there is no mirror between us. Interlocking. Heads rubbing against each other. I see you looking over my shoulder into the mirror, your eyes half-shut. I see you pulling me back, spreading my legs, looking between my legs. Breathing heavily. I see the curves, I see how I get breasts and how hard you become. Our flushed skin, the different colours. The swelling. I squint through my eyelashes and see your face taking shape. The frown between your eyebrows. I can no longer tell one thing apart from the other. The sweating. The gleaming. The tongue that traces a name around a bellybutton, and again, slower now, below the bellybutton. Gleaming. While another tongue traces the same name around another bellybutton, below that bellybutton. Pink, purplish. We become mucous membrane. Kissing – as if we’re telling the stories of our lives into each other’s mouths.
The mirror is a body coated in glazing. Which bends over the other glazed body. Suctioning onto each other. Softly pulsating.
The bodies infinitely reflect themselves.
Glassy.
Lighting up for just a moment in fathomless, infinite black.