Until he knocks, she can’t be sure she’s been expecting him. That’s her, what he’s reduced her to. An in-betweener, dweller of the fringe. Knows it’s him before looking – they’re beyond peepholes by now, still he likes to play. Holds back a moment, maybe it’s the downstairs neighbor telling her to turn this jungle noise down. If it’s them, she’ll pretend she don’t hear. That the music’s gone her deaf. Except the knock is gentle. Discreet. His mouth pressing into her earlobe when he cums. And even before she opens the door, she needs him. The dryness of his lips, the sense of him, aging – aged? Is he fine wine, even when he’s always conspiculously absent from her dinner table?
The man won’t knock a third time, yet there’s no hiding from him. Waiting. Spies him in the triangle of light, jaundiced by the landing lightbulb. Another woman wouldn’t let him in, not after last time, but she’s never known to mold herself to other, reputable women, so she unbolts the door instead. His disposable animal, his broke-door cage. Only a sliver of her left visible. Only one eye to takr him in, to drink him whole and whet her appetite for his rough skin and the white hairs in his beard.
He’s got his wolfish look about him, his how-d-you-do prowl. It makes him cock his head a second, listening, hinting to her the future. My, Grandma, what loud music I hear. Grins by half – he’s never given her his full measure – to say clever little cub. He’s always loved her taste in music, because it’s old and quirky. Like him.
Draws in a breath. Her, not him. Is the record skipping, or is that just this moment between them? They’ve been growing fragmentary, their lives, she worries their golden days are coming to an end, and his smile disappears into that look she recognized in his face even before he’d told of his name. There’s men like him and there’s women like her, and then there’s recognizing each other. The toeing of the knife’s edge that’s playing with fire, if that didn’t sound so cliched and lukewarm. That’s the trouble with men like him – they like life and red blood still on their steak and know to open their mouths wide. Does recognition measure kinship? Is her mouth wide also when he’s not pushing his greedy tongue past her lips? Or is it just this, a lifetime keeping time for men like him, hungry, dangerous men, men who’ve learned to walk the line, but also remember when to skip it?
Is anybody seeing? Peeking? Fox-holing them through neighboring peepers, and have they recognized him? He cuts a fine figure, still. She wonders and he does not bother with her wonderings. He’s pushing her inside, slams the door shut, bolt shut, world out shut behind them. And for once, she’s not self-conscious about her pyjamas, about her unmade face and the sweat stains in her pits. Dancing, loud. Music and he’s kissing her against the tealights’ guide. None of it matters – the phone, the neighbors, the late hour, it all merges and collides into the rawness of him, the primal compulsion he’s asserted over her from their beginning. And they’re on the floor, and he spares her nothing. Crushes her under the full weight of his body, long-limbed and broad. There’s odds and ends, of course, that must’ve looked different when he was her age, but she loses herself to this, this heap of man ragging her soft, bare skin against the carpet braids. Licking the sweat off her chest, circling hawk-like the caves of her, the crannies, her young, firm nipples. He latches onto her. And the music is loud and she opens her mouth and lets him lose himself into her.

desire. and the winding, fantastic ways it manifests in us. more to come. reviving old-ass pictures. i know. how crass.

superlatives of want [1]