𝑱𝑶𝑯𝑵𝑵𝒀 '𝑺 𝑳𝑰𝑻𝑻𝑳𝑬 𝑩𝑰𝑹𝑫𝑰𝑬, 𝒋 𝒍𝒆𝒏𝒏𝒐𝒏

𝐯. 𝐚 𝐛𝐞𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐦𝐚𝐧

⚘🕊 ⚘
—

     engulfed in smoke, they simmered. naked with bellies full of infidel, though limp and lagging in every way. he tried to have her again, the mouth of his cigarette kissing her cheek as he held her face, his lips on her neck. still thumbing at her nipples until they'd perked again. but she just asked him for a cigarette, and he allowed her one. the sight of him was no longer appealing to her.

     "i wanted 'er to go with other men, y'know," he confessed after a silence. he didn't lift his head from her shoulder. she was now motherly. he would suckle her until her sympathy ran dry, and he was left alone.

"well, i don't want to take you from her," birdie stated honestly. it didn't scorn him, though. he wouldn't have wanted her to. she was too young and pretty to be messed up by a guy like him. the sky was black outside, but john twisted his wrist under the lampshade to comfort birdie's crying and kept it on. it didn't hurt either of them to befriend honesty now. an unspoken contract instructed that there would be nothing further in the realm of intimacy like this. she sipped at the filter of her cigarette, trembling lungs fogging to grey.

     it must've been around eight, john thought, catching a speck of dried semen crackling yellow around her inner thigh. he'd have to replace the sheets before yoko came back.

the whole room stunk of disappointment. of wishing to rewind. tapes forever reeling backward. long strips of black film whizzing behind their eyes like clockwork. john remained silent for a long time. recalling what it must've been like to roll around in the womb. there hid a fascination with it for so many years. was it rebirth he desired, or something else? we are in life as we are in blackness. gutless and fretful, making wrong turns and false stops. there was really no difference. a tuft of ash staggered down to the floor as he flung his arm away and coughed into it.

     birdie brought her thighs to her chest, watching his throat seize. "you kind of hurt me, you know?" she pried through a broken whisper. and he knew, her eyes conveyed it well enough. it shattered him. birdie supposed he was mournful for he looked too scared to feel her again. but she felt no anger now, just a confusion fused chafe in her soul. all she wanted was to be felt by him. and loved right. she hadn't realized he was incapable.

     he ashed his cigarette against the bedside tray made of brazilian white clay. manipulated and dried to form a round canal. all you need is love was carved in the middle in red. he sighed again. "i know."

    their eyes met, still beautiful to each other. john turned on his side and flexed one leg so his foot perched on his knee. he could never sit right. couldn't love right, couldn't think right. it was if he would never change. so irreversibly in shambles that everyone else around him had to be too.

      "i wish i hadn't," he voiced soon after and birdie felt over him to crush her smoking white stub against the ashtray. they paused in thought for a moment, frozen in time above and below one another. with a twitch in her face, she hugged him, falling onto his flat chest and burying her cheek into his sheltering arm. tender below the foot of swarthy galaxies. they wrapped around each other with cacophonies of a sad joy moving through them. john kneaded his tongue along his front teeth and wet his lips. i'm going to leave her, he said. cocoon himself for the better. walk the streets accessorized with delighted eyes. fall into the stars anew. to his surprise, birdie laughed, her body grooving along his body until they both laughed with straining necks and chortling bellies like desperate fish upon a dry dock.

     then they laid for a while in that lazy, giggling lump. before birdie decided she had to go home. "curfew," she warned again, playfully, dragging her wilted body from the other like she was dragging soft petals along paper. it settled gently within her that she had no other way to love him.

    john was left unmoved on his back again. afraid that he'd drop through the floor if it were to find itself beneath his feet.

     "what's ye're real name?" he asked while her legs dipped through the holes of her underwear. she tugged the back so it formed evenly along her bottom, a slight discomfort contorting her face whenever she dabbed between her legs. but she smiled softly after the pain faded, arms like strings crossing below her breasts.

     "dakota," she replied, eyebrows lifting as if she knew he wouldn't believe her.

     "will i ever see ye' again?" he ventured once more. his front teeth bubbled from between his budding lips and she saw the pearls of his youth.

     smoothing out her tussled hair, she shrugged. "you know where i live."

     then a sad smile flickered toward him as she dazed into the hallway, the world slow and fuzzy as she disappeared from his unaided view. a clothed dash of green and black feet unlocked the front door moment's later, and flew off.

—

in the pendulous daylight, john waited alone as he had been for hours; following the waxing and waning of the high sun on the floor as it was eclipsed behind clouds. he pictured birdie and her parents. her running back to confess it all. ruining him before he'd even truly began. she wouldn't. he hoped she wouldn't. and yet, he didn't recoil at the thought. let them come. burn him down. set his home and livelihood alight. at least he'd be starting over in an unknown elsewhere. at least he'd be new.

his mind still turned over his words. what he would say when yoko arrived home safe. how he could possibly explain the revelation that led him to need her gone.

"yoko..." john rehearsed, hands twiddling in his lap, still naked. "i think..." he released himself from the sheets and found reasonable plainclothes to wear.

"i've been thinking... yoko. it's time." he tuned his glasses to his face and dressed. staring in the bathroom mirror, he widened his mouth and scrunched his nose. the telling wrinkles in his skin didn't quite leave his face when it fixed again. like rings to a stump.

"my dear... my dear, my dear... i think-"

a key in the lock. the door pushing open. hesitant steps within. "john?" a rattling voice called. "why's the door unlocked? john?"

a tall body emerged creeping from the bedroom. streaking cheeks full of tears. yoko paused in shock, hands nesting in her husband's fine hair as he came before her and plummeted helplessly to his knees. "what is it, darling?" she cooed, her fair face anxious. he pressed childishly against her pant leg and sobbed, holding tight to her thigh.

"i had her..." john wheezed after a long time. "she was young and she was brave an' i had her... and i'm awful, yoko... baby, i'm awful. rotten... dirty, son-of-a-bitch. i shouldn't have done it! i shouldn't have! i love ye', darling. baby, i love ye'..." he wiped his snotting nose against her, hot, briny tears washing away the early philadelphia smog. when she took her hand from his head, his eyes jetted up at her wildly. don't leave me, oh, don't leave me, he begged through a sorrowful quivering face.

but yoko's face was unstirred. those big, hollow eyes blinked softly, breathing quietly and earnest. she heaved a heavy, wifely sigh.

"i know, john. i know."

— fin—