[ON HOLD] LOVE ME LIKE ART

13

— IMANI "BAMBI"
L. CRAWFORD 🫦

A GASP IS CAUGHT in the tract of his throat, as the bathroom door barrels open. His silhouette turns into ice once his orbs, clotted in smoke and alcohol, catch me like a snuffling fish trying to break out of a fishing net. I understand his stagger, his possible consternation because this is the mens toilet.

Anatomy would certainly suggest that I'm not a man.

"You know you're in the men's toilet?" He points out in a raspy timbre that wraps around my neck, like a snake coiling itself around a vine branch, teeming with fruit.

"I didn't notice." Of course, I fucking noticed. The urinals dotted around leave no room for doubt. I bite mockingly, as I hold a slender wand of my red lipstick to my lips. The crimson smudge is a map charting from the corner of my lips down to the plains of my neck, at the hands of DJ Jax. I brush the silk coat against my lips but I can feel eyes piercing every inch of my back. I feel like I've stepped into the den where the ravenous abide, especially in this cut-out dress.

I don't turn to meet him. "Didn't they tell you that it's rude to stare?"

"Imani?" His words fall out of his lips, like nobody is expecting rainfall. Now, my own shadow turns to ice, I'm now the victim of a tract in my throat, except my words are nil.

He knows me.

He knows me enough to know my name, behind the glaze of nonchalance, where I dance with the affections of these men for breakfast. He knows my battered truth and has one-upped me before I knew we were playing.

"Yea?" I pirouette and turn towards him. Suddenly, he isn't this aggressor I've dressed up in my head. This woodsman with a bow and arrow, intent on impaling me. I remember his taut olive face that grappled the fibres of my chest. His hands, their own tapestry, as he cupped his tart glass of beer and whiskey thereafter. And his smile, a decadent white.

I can remember him anywhere.

He's dressed in black cargo trousers, an oversized stitched white t-shirt and white Force 1s. I trail after his threads like it's the pinnacle and note the circumference of his arms. The last time I saw him, he looked Herculean in that posh blue shirt. I'm not sure how, but he looks even better now.

Ink bleeds on his right forearm in the form of a compass. I didn't notice that before because I was too caught up noticing everything else but I notice it now.

"You." I squint, because I can't seem to remember his name. "You're that lawyer with the friend who stood you up, init?" Tonight, he doesn't look like one. He didn't look like one that night, either. He looks like a man that can throw me off my axis. A man that beams with intentionality and honesty when he isn't safe here. "Remind me of your name again?"

"Zach." He says, a little bruised. "Is that how you've been describing me?"

The echo of my voice feels a little loud in my own ears and my orbs are ablaze, burnt with red flecks of brown scattered in like stardust.

"Why? Cus you think I've been talking about you?" I fold my lips into smile, whilst my hands gather around the sink. He probably thinks he's been a sonnet on my lips, ink in a cartilage that won't dry. But, the truth is harsher than fiction. I haven't thought about him, I left whatever fated conversations to disappear into an ether of smoke.

There's enough space between us to stem whatever this is but his eyes continue to look at me, like I'm the last lick of caramel on his plate.

"Haven't you?" He pries, in that low whisper of his.