blood as if he had come through a forest of nettles. She did more besides. More and more as her little dark room filled with that compressed silence (a silence that somehow swallowed their breathing, his moans, her sharp fox cries) and outside the garden roared and trembled, trumpeted, disclaimed.
The garden mustered all of its dense, bushy conglomeration, from the dormant border mums to the fetid corners of moss, from the thickets of wandering Jew and bell-sprung hosta to the cyclamen beating its mewling blooms against the panes of her glass. It mustered its whole self to a hysterical frenzy, a shrill, mouthless clamor so total and extreme that her next door neighbor, smoking a cigarette on his porch and watching the streaming branches of the catalpa toss against the moon, wondered what it was that could have snuck through her fence. Something large, he thought, or several things, cats perhaps taking advantage of the clear night to mate. ‘Time to make more cats,’ he remembered, some distant line of poetry, and smiled, pleased with himself and this beautiful night. How still it was. How mild.
Their affair continued in much the same way for many weeks. Some nights, he would come to the hatch in her floor and scratch there. Some nights, she would fling it open and call down into the darkness. All throughout he continued to make his garden rounds and she continued to stand for him, a beacon in the window but lighting nothing, guiding nothing, noticeable only because behindher was a darkness so black it seemed a living thing, pressing its furred weight into all the crannies of the room, folding around her like a cloak or a curtain. What did she see during this time? Often it seemed as if she were blind. And what did she hear? She heard a dense roaring, a hum approaching and receding, sometimes a twang as if of a wire snapping beneath an unbearable strain. She did not eat. Her spine now looked like a watch chain and her ribcage a pocket watch left carelessly open, slung over the back of some chair. It was all new, strange, howling, but sometimes it felt as if there was something—a resonant ache, a stretching—that she had always felt, that she had only forgotten for some little time after she had been born. When they were finished, she would take him limp into her mouth and taste all that was there. The salt and the pearl-seed musk, the copper tang (hers? his?) and under it the bitter yellow smear of pollens. The sex of the lily, the poppy, the rose.
One day, a departure, she opened the hatch herself and descended the ladder into his rooms. For some time now she had been aware of herself in a different way. She felt a fullness, an uneasy shift. That morning, she had woken to the sunlight climbing in tentative inches up her quilt, motes of dust distinctly glimmering against the eggshell walls, and thought, “Ah ha.” She had gripped the hasp of her pelvis and shaken it as if in confirmation.
The ladder seemed very long, or maybe her body was shorter than she was accustomed to, curled in on itself. Her dressing gown, which she had thrown on for some reason over her shorts and her yellow Pearl Harbor tee-shirt, flapped about her ankles and threatened to slip beneath her feet, tripping her. Her hands ached, her arms ached, and when she stopped to catch her breath and wipe the sweat out of her eyes, she saw the wall before her had gone from brick and mortar to raw, clay earth, packed andsmooth as if shined by the pressure of long use. She braced herself on the ladder with one arm and picked at the dirt, digging a little hole with her forefinger, but all she discovered was more of the same. The passageway seemed much tighter than it should be as well, but she didn't trust her balance enough to turn around. A warm breeze came up the tunnel and fluttered her dressing gown, soothed the backs of her thighs, flirted up the leg of her shorts and out the baggy gap of their waistband.
She found him in his kitchen frying an egg. He
The garden mustered all of its dense, bushy conglomeration, from the dormant border mums to the fetid corners of moss, from the thickets of wandering Jew and bell-sprung hosta to the cyclamen beating its mewling blooms against the panes of her glass. It mustered its whole self to a hysterical frenzy, a shrill, mouthless clamor so total and extreme that her next door neighbor, smoking a cigarette on his porch and watching the streaming branches of the catalpa toss against the moon, wondered what it was that could have snuck through her fence. Something large, he thought, or several things, cats perhaps taking advantage of the clear night to mate. ‘Time to make more cats,’ he remembered, some distant line of poetry, and smiled, pleased with himself and this beautiful night. How still it was. How mild.
Their affair continued in much the same way for many weeks. Some nights, he would come to the hatch in her floor and scratch there. Some nights, she would fling it open and call down into the darkness. All throughout he continued to make his garden rounds and she continued to stand for him, a beacon in the window but lighting nothing, guiding nothing, noticeable only because behindher was a darkness so black it seemed a living thing, pressing its furred weight into all the crannies of the room, folding around her like a cloak or a curtain. What did she see during this time? Often it seemed as if she were blind. And what did she hear? She heard a dense roaring, a hum approaching and receding, sometimes a twang as if of a wire snapping beneath an unbearable strain. She did not eat. Her spine now looked like a watch chain and her ribcage a pocket watch left carelessly open, slung over the back of some chair. It was all new, strange, howling, but sometimes it felt as if there was something—a resonant ache, a stretching—that she had always felt, that she had only forgotten for some little time after she had been born. When they were finished, she would take him limp into her mouth and taste all that was there. The salt and the pearl-seed musk, the copper tang (hers? his?) and under it the bitter yellow smear of pollens. The sex of the lily, the poppy, the rose.
One day, a departure, she opened the hatch herself and descended the ladder into his rooms. For some time now she had been aware of herself in a different way. She felt a fullness, an uneasy shift. That morning, she had woken to the sunlight climbing in tentative inches up her quilt, motes of dust distinctly glimmering against the eggshell walls, and thought, “Ah ha.” She had gripped the hasp of her pelvis and shaken it as if in confirmation.
The ladder seemed very long, or maybe her body was shorter than she was accustomed to, curled in on itself. Her dressing gown, which she had thrown on for some reason over her shorts and her yellow Pearl Harbor tee-shirt, flapped about her ankles and threatened to slip beneath her feet, tripping her. Her hands ached, her arms ached, and when she stopped to catch her breath and wipe the sweat out of her eyes, she saw the wall before her had gone from brick and mortar to raw, clay earth, packed andsmooth as if shined by the pressure of long use. She braced herself on the ladder with one arm and picked at the dirt, digging a little hole with her forefinger, but all she discovered was more of the same. The passageway seemed much tighter than it should be as well, but she didn't trust her balance enough to turn around. A warm breeze came up the tunnel and fluttered her dressing gown, soothed the backs of her thighs, flirted up the leg of her shorts and out the baggy gap of their waistband.
She found him in his kitchen frying an egg. He
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