Mouse Release

Mouse Release

Fine Lines

S is more silvery than soft. His smile is slightly crooked, revealing full and crown-like teeth. S says his mom is a dentist and I say I believe that: only perfectionists know how to make bent lines smooth and straight and neat for people-pleasing. Mouths contain a whole first impression anyways. He drives me to Ruislip afterwards, to his family home. The streets bend and swerve and the ringing of the car makes kaleidoscopes in my ears. Someone winks at me in the next car over. S doesn’t notice. Then when we get to the house, it starts to rain, thick swabs of water connecting to our skin. The house is tall like S and dark like him too. I picture him there and say it is strange the way houses reflect people. He says it isn’t. I say ok. He makes me fajitas with bright red peppers. I slice them slowly, nervously talking. He hangs around me like a shadow, tall. I know his hands want to grope my waist. Then we make cookies in clumps in loaf pans because he doesn’t have any sheets and he apologizes, not really sorry though. And I apologize too. Not knowing why.

Please ENTER

The second time I see S, he looks more handsome than I remember. The orange light from the lamp sweeps over his face, making his features more dark and comprehensive. The stubble on his face is new. Unawkward. Manly. S doesn’t say I look beautiful. I’m not expecting him to. We talk for a little while, sitting across from each other. He fits into my apartment. Is confident and smooth, moving cooly through it. As he places his jacket on the chair. As he offers me a jam donut and beware, they’re addictive. We talk about our weeks. He is stressed with work. I don’t tell him about my homesickness or my binging episodes. I just want him to hug me. He reaches for my writing, strategically placed by his elbow. I pretend to care, though I wouldn’t care if he read those extensions of myself.

Let someone in.

I playfully grab it from his hands, bending over him. He strokes my waist, my ass. His thin lips fit onto mine. For seconds, all the time. Drawing me in close to his pine-smoke smell. The stubble scratches, hurts so good. He picks me up and drops me on the bed. Instead, one thing leads to another. Instead, no hug comes.

You Worry Too Much

Truth be told, I knew what I was getting into with S. A non-relationship. My older sister is worried. As we crowd around the The Green Room table, she says:

- I’m worried.

On the train home, as roadways and thick buildings ease by, we don’t say anything. A group of schoolboys are jeering and laughing beside us. The laughter stumbles out in semi-colons, self-contained and yet efforting to say more. Train lines, thick and brown, collide together as we move, shuttering across the railway. Yellowed bushes and brown-bricked houses flit past. S says that England can be ugly at times. All places can be ugly at times.

No Business Here

When I walk in the mornings, S is on my mind and it drives me mad. The gardens are pretty though, and so are the fields which stretch up and down, cow-tied and humble in a quiet way. In a quiet way, older women push and work through a section of weeds. I can hear them talking as I walk. Laughing and ankle-deep in mud. The chickens coo next to them. Their laughter is a lull and the dull, pensive walking is made sweet. I pass them and smile. They invite me in. I carry on, round the gate to the fields. Sticky mud climbs up my shoes, I sink and slosh around, slipping in my own misuse. The hills are twinged yellow and green, while cows graze over against the wood, unseen. Before me, a stretch of mud folds out like a tongue, narrow and wet. I try my best to walk on the dried-mud spots, but I sink away with no tether to reach me.

A DOG SPRINGS IN FRONT, LEAPS.

Pokes its head by my side. I turn. His eyes are blue and wild, thick orange fur. He has something curled up in his mouth. A mouse, its grey body squirming between his teeth. The owner comes up behind me and the dog turns.

- Get back here! the owner says.

I turn around too, obedient in my own way.

- Let go of it. Let go! Rupert, out! You have no business with that mouse, the owner says.

The dog struggles to release it. Instead, he flees and leaps again across the field, the mouse still wedged under his tongue. Somehow, the owners’ words speak more clearly to me than the dog.

I watch as, far off, the owner and dog join again under the sun.

Don’t Forget About Me

At home, questions of the dog and the mouse swirl around in my head. I’m lying on my bed, back down, stomach up, hands folded over my belly button.

I love the way my breasts feel.

In all their milky warmth beneath my shirt. The moonlight comes in as sharp, thick waves across the carpet. Shadows are purple, spiking up against the wall like thrown paint. I feel an urge to look at myself. Not that I do that a lot. The low house creaks. The radiator turns on, clicks into eternity. I get up and walk across the kitchen floor, barefeet. I go to the mirror and look at my face. The way the lamplight glows across, from one side to the next in a half-curtain glance, makes the features of my cheekbones more relenting, release. My lips are red. My makeup smudged in at the corner of my eyes. My hair long and messy at the back. For a moment, I wish briefly that S could be here to see me like this.

Natural.

And, for a second, a beautiful warmth enshrouds the layers of sweaters and fine skin. Because the question is no longer a question: Am I beautiful? Am I worthy? Am I clean? Answers start to swirl around me, in brief moments and long stretches. I don’t want to pull away or look anywhere else. And I think of the dog and the mouse and the mouse in the dog’s teeth and the dog looking at me. And the mouse is squirming but really the dog is no killer, jaws bound to release, the mouse too smart not to find its way.

The Next Day (And Final)

All I can think about is the dog and the mouse as I lie in S’s bed. As though a storybook were contained in my head, the pages flipped to graphic art and hidden meaning. The ill-seeming mantra of S’s laughs against my collarbones makes me feel uneasy. He likes the pleasure too much or the pleasure is all he wants.

Is sex always just sex?

I approved of the name-calling, both knowingly and unknowingly, yet I didn’t know how rough the word ‘slut’ would sound against my cheek. It falls flat, startling and orchestrated-mundane. A foul grief. S’s body writhes and contorts itself, all bones and thin edges.

I want to push him off. The thought is immediate and constant. And I’ve never thought of being rid of S, of letting my body breathe him out until now, when the night swells in, when he swells inside of me, and heaves against my torso.

I let go.

S says I better not go falling in love with him. But really, I think it’s worn off. But really, I think I’m falling in love with someone else.

There Must Be, There Must Be, Will be, Reconciling Occurring Here

Isn’t it sweet, the way he says that?

Innit

The text glares back at me.

What are you looking for?

I can feel his fear through the screen, waiting to know what I mean. I say I’m looking for nothing. Really, I’m not looking for nothing. But I’m not looking at him. It takes him a while to respond. I can feel his relief over the phone. I delete his number, the remnants of him must slide away.

Into easy loving. In another kind of way. In the room, the moon centered outside, I collide into a slow breathing. The starlights glare into the window and a distant car horn vaporizes into small echoes. The plethora of orange streetlights grease the sky and a man wanders round the road lines. The road lines contain the journey home. A newness must wipe the street clean because, in an instant, it gleams. My mouth is an ammo-loaded, fragile revolver that I’d never shoot. It eases back into complacency but I don’t feel unpowerful. I regard my figure in the mirror above the sink. And look for ages.