Rusty Fire Arms

His skin is tanned golden brown and I can see underneath it the white of his bones, shaping his wide shoulders as he leans toward the fire in the dark. Blonde hair falling into blue eyes. My fingers itch to grab hold of those tousled locks, to pull him to me, our desperate breath warm in each other’s ears. A flash of firelight, angry orange and red, on his bare chest. He stretches and leans against the tree, linking his fingers behind his head, his elbows sharp points jutting into darkness.

He is mine. I will not share him. Ever. My chest tightens at the thought of him leaving, disappearing into the mountains to breathe with the trees there. I know he will go; nothing I say or do ever makes him stay, but still, I try.

The night smells of charred pine and heated skin. It presses against my face, warm and urgent.

“Don’t go,” I say, my voice crackling in my throat like burning paper, rasping across the fire to his sun-burnt ears. “Don’t go this time.”

His eyes flash blue at me, burning my skin hotter than the fire between us. He bites his lip, tosses his head to clear the hair from his eyes and reaches into the pocket of his worn blue jeans, his arm whispering against the bare skin of his torso. He pulls his hand from his pocket, uncurls his calloused fingers. In his open palm, his silver Leatherman knife glints in the firelight.

His arm is long, the muscles shaped, tight and smooth beneath his skin. I am beside him now, my fingers running the length of his arm, tracing the blue lines of veins until I meet his hand. I touch the Leatherman and fierce gooseflesh spreads from my fingertips, up my arm, and across my chest; the Leatherman is freezing, like it’s been pressed against ice cubs in his pocket.

He jerks the Leatherman away from me possessively. It is his. He will not share it. Ever. With a simple flick of his wrist, he dislodges the sharp, cold knife from the depths of the Leatherman, clutching it tightly in his left hand. He shifts his body away from me slightly and presses the knife blade into the muscle of his shoulder where it begins the gentle slope into his neck. Across the fire again, I watch as he saws into his arm, the small silver blade of the kinfe sinking into the smooth sun-browned skin. Dark red blood, black in the firelight, pools to the surface of his skin, welling and seeping from the gash, which reaches now from his armpit to the middle of his shoulder blade. Blood streams run down his arm, across his chest, between his fingers. The thick, red liquid drips into the dirt beneath him, the sound of sit echoing off the trees and melting into the cracking of the flames between us. He smells of iron and fire, charred and sharp.

He turns his head to me, still sawing the knife deeper and deeper into his own flesh. His face is blanched but blank, and his eyes lock onto mine, sparking and shining, a clear blue color, almost black in the firelight. His right arm hangs, gaping, from his torso, the bone a prefect white circle, clearly sawed through. Only bloody strings of muscle, sinew and skin keep the limb from breaking away completely. The fingers of his right hand, though, are still moving, his fist clenching and unclenching, his fingernails stained red with the blood pooling in his palm.

With one last jerk of the knife, so violent that even his hair shakes in front of his eyes, the remaining skin and muscle are fully severed and the right arm comes completely free of his body, floating slowly to the ground beside him.

Carefully, he leans down and uses his left hand to roll the amputated limb up his leg, into his lap, the hand now limp, fingers flapping with each rotation. He begins to gently fold the right arm into neat squares, each one smaller than the first. Blood seeps out each time he creases the fold, staining his pants and sprinkling the ground around him. When his arm has been folded to the size of my pocket, all the blood gone from it, he tosses the souvenir across the fire to me.

I catch it, cradling it gently in my hands, my waist tingling with the remembered warmth of that arm, usually flung across my body while its owner sleeps with reckless abandon behind me.

“Take good care of that,” he says, his voice muffled by the thread he holds in his mouth as he stitches up the stump left by his amputation. “I’ll need it back someday.”

I slide the neatly folded arm into my pocket. “I won’t let it rust,” I whisper.

When I look up, he is gone, the scent of blood and sun-burnt skin left by him smelling more potent than the burning wood. I call for him, wanting desperately to give him something of my own to take into the mountains, but he doesn’t answer. Only the wind in the trees, rushing through the leaves and blowing the smoke of the fire into my face.

“This arm isn’t good enough,” I say to the empty space he has left behind. “I want a leg, too.”

Proof of my Insanity

Dear young man who might still be a boy and who makes me feel like I'm in high school again (which, I promise, is a bad thing), but who makes me laugh and lets me pull his hair,

You are my current greatest perplexity. How young you are, tall one; still floating between boyhood and manhood, on the cusp of adult. Where did you come from, with your long hair and mischievous eyes? What wave brought you to me, mad one?

You're bringing out the worst in me, tall boy. I mean, you're making me want to leave the things I have to do in the dust, and this other girl you spend time with, that makes big fat green jealousy rip through me until my stomach turns and twists itself into knots.

I hate you, tall boy, for your height and your ponytail and your wide, wide smile. For your big hands and the grin that creeps across your face after I kiss you. I hate you for making me stand on tiptoes to press my lips to yours, and for the way my legs fit so perfectly around your hips. I hate you for the lean muscles of your arms that lift me so effortlessly, and for the dark track of hair on your stomach that leads down past the waist of your jeans. I hate the way you fit so easily into what I've always wanted, and the way you are so unlike anything I've ever had.

You make my blood run hot, tall boy, rushing through my veins like rivers and flushing my face until I can't help but smile. I can't help but do a lot of things when it comes to you, and not all of them are so innocent as a smile. You make me so angry, tall boy. At you, but then not at you. And at myself.

Here's the thing: I want everything. I realize that's an incredibly broad statement, so let me both elaborate and erase all doubt of my complete and utter girlish insanity.

I want you to love me, but I don't want to love you. I want you desperate for the smell of my skin and the way I wrap my legs around you.

I want to crawl inside your skin, stretch my bones until they match yours, until our bones are twins, side by side beneath your warm muscles and smooth skin.

I want to nestle into your head, make my bed behind your eyes. I want to see what you see, hear the things you think, the secrets you keep.

I want hugs given with reckless abandon and kisses on the neck. I want late night phone calls, laughing. I want the feel of your eyes on me, even when I'm not looking.

You burn my brain with the way you are. I want to know you; I want to stop the games and move everyone else around us out of the picture so you and I can sit down and I can know all about you.

Where do you lay your head at night, tall boy? Do your feet dangle off the end of your mattress, limp with sleep? Do you sprawl across your bed, taking up every inch, leaving no room for an extra body to curl beside yours? Or do you make yourself small and stiff, unmoving and rigid beneath your blankets? I imagine you usually on your back, mouth open and slack. Maybe a thin line of drool pools at the corner of your mouth and a light snore pushes in and out from between your lips, and your arms are spread wide, chest bare, while your skinny body sinks into your mattress. Or maybe you sleep on your stomach, arms by your sides, palms up, face smashed against your pillow.

Why do I want to know how you sleep, tall boy? Because I want to lie beside you. Make spoons with me, tall boy! I want to feel the knobs of your knees fit into the backs of mine, your hips and stomach against the small of my back, your ribs against my shoulder blades. I want to tangle my cold feet with yours and feel your breath in my hair. I want to know what your skin feels like between my sheets.

I will write you into these pages. My words will tell the world about how easily you tear the neck of a guitar with your angry, thrashing metal notes. My words will tell the world about the smoothness of your lips and the peace I felt when I rested my forehead against your temple. In a story, I will capture your laugh and the eagerness with which you speak. I will capture the way you walk, or play football in shoes with no lace, or how your shirts, all too big for you, hang off your rolling shoulders.

But in doing this, tall boy, I'll expose myself to the world. Everyone will know how I am just like the ones that came before and the ones that will come after. They will all see that perhaps I like you a little too much, and that you are probably too young for me, and that you will inevitably make me crazy with your boyishness, but because that hasn't happened yet, I am pretending it never will.

I am just waiting for the words that live for you in my head to run out so that I can find a new skinny, tall boy to write about. I hope this one has tattoos and isn't so young and I hope his kisses make yours fly out of my head like they never happened, so that you and I can just be friends and I don't have to get so hot and bothered to kiss you.

I am trying to give up on you, tall boy, but I am not doing so well because all I want to do is run my fingers through your long, straight hair, pulling your head back so I can kiss your jaw and feel the warmth of your chest seep into mine.