The skin on your chest black, clotted lava. In your armpit a sculpture cast from human skin. How do such masses form? It takes time. You have a monster’s hands. Your eyes half-closed, hiding behind your eyelids. Thirty years you drove a truck. Now you’re eaten away by cancer, as I’m eaten away by desire. We sit in the kitchen, drinking beer. The first bottle’s warm. The second, you take from the fridge. You pry off the cap with a knife, lever it open tooth by tooth. “Slow and steady,” you say. “Anything worth doing, is worth doing right.” The bottle cap pops, somersaults up in the air. I laugh, like it’s a fabulous trick, like we just outwitted the Fates. “I like how it fizzes,” you say, holding the beer high pouring it in a thin stream. You like your foam. For me, you pour it down the side of the glass, I like everything transparent, clear. Such a shame you can’t hear the storm outside. It’s gathering. I rub my thighs together. I’m waiting for the dam to burst. You raise your eyebrows and say, “A storm?” I laugh once more. I’m smiling a bit too much for such a poetic moment, A grandfather drinking beer with his daughter’s daughter. The summer sizzles in the rain beyond the window. Your Hans Kloss G.I. fringe pushed back, one boyish curl plastered to your sweaty forehead in front of your face, furrowed like tree bark. What more do we need than a storm like this? Than to release the electricty that’s been welling up inside us all day long? I send a simple text: “We should be making love in such a storm.” I lie down on the floor. Drink in the fizzing of the rain. Your too-big trousers, sagging on your hips, skin charred black below the waistband. I close my eyes. And wait for the storm to enclose me as well.
