a supply of filled silence

Sometimes, between coming and going, there is only muted silence.


1.
The three of them are pressed against towels, folded white sheets, embroidered pillow cases, mop handles. The air is bottled lemons and the floor is a matte mirror, waxy glow and squeal. The supply room had been left unlocked, and they had inhabited.

He is on the floor, her chair of flesh and throb. And then, it is her, back to his front, a tangle of hair and moist skin, an opening here - and here - and here. And, then, him, standing, front to her front, her mouth, his cup.

They are very useful to each other, supplying the demand in this supply room of beds and shine; their dirt, their want, touching other people's clean, creating unthinkables.


2.
In the moment that is raw and awake and asleep all at once, thoughts first become still, hushed, lullabied. Then, they arouse for a moment to dance, their limits and edges and cohesiveness blurring into the tiles and cement slabs and earth beneath. And finally, they just melt all together, a death of held breaths and throat breaths and grunting breaths and god-help-me breaths.

This is the way it is for her, taking them both at once.


3.
When their warm liquid is felt within her folds, down her thighs, against her tongue, along the sides of her teeth and puddled behind her puckered lips, when her convulsions of clench and collapse are stilled, an empty book written in freehand, they untangle themselves.


4.
Tissue, water, straightened clothes, smoothed hair, no eye contact, only duty. Hand on doorknob. One out, pause, the next, pause, and the last. There is work.


Sometimes, between coming and going, there is only muted silence. That is all that is needed.

*

Copyright Tasha M, May 2008.