The Biographer

She’s hungry. Her hands shake, but the movement of her body is graceful, fluid, studied. Her breath is ragged; yet her eyes close, and she completes the dance. Vacant sounds accompany the opiate ballerina- faraway waves crashing against the rocky beach, the electric denouement of bars freckling the streets, a revving of a motorcycle in C major.

First the allegro. The hunger clawing at her skin begs to be satiated. The desperation. Elevé, glissade, jètè, kick-ball-change. She unbuttons her jeans and leans against the wall spread eagle. Her underwear, so pretty. So pink. A curl of strawberry blond peaks out, softly billowing in the night breeze. The inside of her thigh is bruised, the flesh a palate of twilight colors. Dark reds, purples, blues, faded violets.  She is a work of accidental art, sprayed watercolor on a canvas, a masterful sketch. A superior first draft of a tragic poem lost in the scrap pile, written absentmindedly on an envelope or between the lines of a grocery list. One loved only by scholars and fanatics.

She is hungry. She slaps her thigh and holds the tool of her salvation steady, steady, steady…then the piqué and the immediate reward. The tautness of her dancing shoulders is released with a thrum of violin strings. The movement of her anesthetized limbs is almost sensual. Arousing. Her head rolls back and the syringe out of her hand.

While she still quivers with pleasure, I move. Out of the shadows. If she sees me, she doesn’t show it. If she sees me, she must not care. I love her. So I come closer until I loom over her and straddle her bedraggled body. I want to touch her everywhere, but I can’t. I have to move quickly. It is my turn to dance.

I study her face. There’s a trace of alarm in her eyes though her face is still slack. Her lips move, but I can’t make out a sound. Only a faint, warm breath on my cheek. Her eyes are dark, cavernous. She swallows, and the smooth skin on her throat strains against the words she can’t say. I run my finger down her neck. It’s so beautiful. It’s so warm and graceful. I kiss her there, right in the hollow under her jaw. I smell smoke, sweat, and sex on her. There. Right in the hollow of her throat. It’s so full of stories.

I reach into the pocket of my coat and grasp a coil of industrial wire. There it is, pulled taut between us, like all of the things we wish we could say to each other. The middle C of a violincello. A deep vibrato hum in the air. I press it against her throat.

Her eyes try to tell me something. She struggles against the weight of my body as I sit on her chest, my knees pinning down her arms like the translucent wings of a moth fluttering helpless underneath the studied gaze of a dedicated collector.

Her eyes tell me everything.

She’s hungry.

Shhhh, I whisper. I don’t dare disturb our microcosm. There is love in holding on. There is beauty in letting go. Power in taking. Today we triumph. Today we are all three.

She lingers. She strains against the truth. Her lips are the blue of a velvet sky right after the sunset. The last breath of the earth. A tear trails down her face. Her eyelashes darken with moisture. The whites of her eyes are veined with delicate lines. A capillary bursts, and a fleck of red spreads until it traces the black of her iris. She is parchment. She is pen. She writes herself into the story like a blot of ink.

We are at the cusp. We stand at the edge of the world. We breathe in unison. Her last breath will be ours. She emits a choking sound. Her eyelashes quiver and eyes roll back into her head. I let go of the wire. I touch her face, trace my finger around her lips. I lean in. I can smell her breath. It is sour and heavy. My lips touch hers. I kiss her and breathe her in. She moves no more.

She was hungry.

But not as hungry as I.