Between Brothers.

His fingers linger,
Over the purple imprints on my arm.
He doesn't say anything,
And I continue to gaze out of the window,
as if I don't notice that he's stroking the thumb prints with a compulsion that betrays him.

He shifts his grip an inch lower before he pulls me over his lap.
My shoulders lie against his knees,
and my head falls back over the edge.
The world is upside down.
And underneath the desk across the room, I can see a lifetime of dirt.
I wonder who cleans this house.


As I wonder he undoes the buttons on my shirt.
It's purple,
And really soft.
Like his fingers, as they leave a trail of awakened nerve endings down my front.

I hear him him gasp,
As he pulls my shirt apart.
It's not about the naked breasts, I know that,
and he confirms that when his mouth reaches for the bite marks on my skin,
and not the skin itself.
This is not about me.

I'm just the vessel that carries the wounds.
The strange encrypted messages they send each other; messages written in blood and bruise.
Silent.
Often, wordless, when received.
But so, so loud to create.

I look at the dirt under the table.
I try to keep looking at the dirt under the table.
The alternative is to focus on his gentle mouth.
Caressing my swollen skin.
And isn't that just unbearable?
It's a much better use for my time, to look for patterns in dirt.

Until I cannot.
Because he cannot.

Because they're really just the same, the two of them.
The want to use their lips to do good, but they are helpless against their teeth.
And when the night bites me, I'm helpless too;
helpless to resist as his fists paint me black.

He tells me not to say anything,
but I don't know what he thinks i may say.
The only sounds I can really make,
are the ones forced out by his teeth digging against my pelvis.
So deep, it feels as if anytime he'll hit bone.
That part of me feels so raw as he slides on top of me,
the denim feels oddly comforting against my naked body.

But his breath against my neck just feels odd.
Like it's cold.
The inside of his mouth is cold too,
so cold my mouth feels like a pit of fire against him.
His kisses are always urgent,
as if he is overly concerned about missing the train.

But maybe it's not so strange.
He doesn't ever know when I'll be gone or when I might come back.
He doesn't know.
And neither do I.
All we have is this.
Now.

This moment where his hand lifts me up by the hair,
propping me against the moonlight.
His hands running over the new bruises my breasts and pinching the old ones,
as if to bring them back alive.
The way the young breathe new life into the old.

As he stands up I know,
to follow.
To follow him onto his feet, only to fall to the floor.
In the final act, we all descend.
When everything else falls away, we're all reduced.
To nothing but human.
Desperate.
And needy.

All of us,
So needy.
As he takes his place behind me,
with his hands on my hips and his gaze between my thighs.
Pulling me into me him.
While his hands travel up my back.
Past the skin so smooth and up to the burning mass of recent injury.

His surprise is evident in the way he twitches inside me.
A secret message.
Previously undiscovered.
His hand reaches over to my throat,
and pulles me up until I am leaning against him,
The cuts on my back, right before his eyes.

*Mine Always*

He reads out loud.

*And a little heart.*

I mumble, inside my head.

I already knew what it said,
but he read it out loud anyway.
It wasn't for me,
it's because they believe they deserve an audience.
There's a secret audience somewhere.
One that I can't see.

*Bastard.*

He says grinning,
With his lips,
Right as his mouth lands in loving tribute against the wounds.
The wound is fresh, even the love hurts a little,
not as much as the sudden vigour.
with which he thrusts inside me.

I lean against the floor,
wincing as his fingertips mutilate the words left on my back.
I wonder what it says now.
It seems like he just scratched it all out.
My identity.
Created to remind him I'm another man's woman, scratched out to send a message back.

A message I will likely never understand.

I look at the dirt under the table.
Clutching the floor while he fucks me.
I try to keep looking at the dirt under the table.
It looks different now that the world is no longer upside down,
Almost, clean.
But I know better,
I know it's exactly the same.

......