I choked – she floated in, and oxygen was a BIC lighter I’d lent. In a pile somewhere, lost with a dozen others. The gallery and all its patrons: gorgeously haunted. She reaches into the throats of passersby, collecting the air from their lungs. And, entranced by her aroma, they comply. In her hands, a breath becomes a blood diamond – wrested from sacred grounds. Yoinked – from the calloused grip of exploited hands. She’s the unexpected installation – the art no one came to see. Yet she ripped the eyes from their sockets anyway.
Dressed in fire, smoldering at her hips, she cauterizes wounds in the same motion she inflicts them. Scabs crystallize into rubies. She turns a shoulder and sets the gallery ablaze, flames whipping into a great sea of fire and gem. And we are so, so in love with our immolation. Her hair, with grey laced through vantablack – she is a burning cigarette and we are the ashes in her wake.
Her eyes are darker than black. In them, the glow of the gallery’s ambiance becomes a galaxy. And for a split second, her gaze collided with mine – the way atoms collide to birth oxygen. She noticed me… There’s my BIC lighter. Again, I can breathe.
My lips recoil from memory. They recall the pain of blistering as they grazed the contours of her form. The skin of my nape buckles in anticipation to be branded again by her touch. I remember. How beads of sweat made her spine a minefield for my fingers to trace. How I was scalded by cold sweat. By salt. By steam.
Actually, no. That wasn’t it. Atoms don’t collide to form oxygen. They fuse in supermassive stars. She didn’t see me.
I’m the one losing lighters.
The air I stole was smoke and those memories –
sweet, sweet nicotine.
How fucking embarrassing –
to think anything would collide for me.
Obviously she didn’t see me.
And if she had,
What then?
There are so many people here. Cleaner. Richer. Better-looking.
Some of them probably own the pieces on the wall.
And I thought I was different?
That she would remember me?
Who the fuck do I think I am?
That’s not even fair.
She’s not like that.
She’s not shallow.
She’s a supermassive star.
I’m projecting.
I’m disgusting.
I’m always doing this.
Building stories from nothing.
Then choking on them –
like they matter.
Spiraling.
Again.
Barf.
I thought I’d die for her but I already have. Many times over.
And I know better. I know how this ends. But I will again.
I must.
She’s a supermassive star.
I’m an ashtray.
Another shoulder turned, this time toward me. Not for me – obviously. But through me. No flames whipping – but with her flourish, the ashes curl from the floor, lacing her ankles, begging to be made whole and burned again. Scabs turn to rubies turn to dust. And the juices in my stomach become cement.
So now I watch her from across the gallery – the same way I eye the last of three chili cheeseburgers I DoorDashed at 11pm on a Tuesday, fried out my fucking mind. Is it just meat sweats or is this chili actually spicy? I couldn’t stomach another bite… But I won’t want to confront it tomorrow. Down the hatch. I’m famished.