after

The sheets were softer than any I owned and far more expensive. Cream coloured beige and beautiful on a high bed, and I sunk into it and floated away in an undercurrent. His pupils were dilated, the surrounding colour a blue I hadn’t noticed before they were that close to me, and his kisses were what they were supposed to be, soft and hard by turns and thrilling. I was dizzy and he saw me as a dark thing, a difficult and prickly thing that had dropped its defences and allowed him to hold it. In the shadows we told each other things while playing on the radio in the other room was music picked to impress me. I waited until track one played again, and left, out on to the street and into my car, lips bruised; driving off into the night feeling like I was moving underwater.


What I have not told you about that night was that I was never supposed to be in that bed. Those sheets should not have been shared with me. His eyes were a pretty colour, but shuttered. I wasn’t allowed to bite. I said things that were callous, and they helped me make my insides feel hard. I was something to him and nothing at the same time. He did things not to my taste, they were not about me. I had said no to him a thousand times, and don’t know where I found the yes of that night. I had to leave before she came home. As I left, at the end of the street a police car sat, lights on, red flashing on the street where I walked, illuminating my path with the colour of an underworld. If they had taken me away for wrong doings, I would not have been surprised.


Neither of these accounts is true.