Page 93 of Rhymes with Metaphor
“Why do you call me cariad?”
“It means ‘sweetheart’ in Welsh.Do you mind?”
“No,” said Joel.“I like it.”
Reg kissed him, tasting the bitter green of the marker.Then he pulled away, held the back of Joel’s neck, and across the ridges of Joel’s larynx, he wrote,treasure box, feeling the vibration as Joel laughed.
Above his collarbones he wrote, in gold,starlight,and in silver,moonlight,and in the dip between,what have you.
In red, he wrotealchemyon the bone below the hollow of Joel’s throat.
“That’s my manubrium,” said Joel, watching.
Reg wrote,NERDin purple glitter around Joel’s left nipple.Joel laughed again.
In orange marker, he wrote over Joel’s heartBury me under the rowan tree.Then he drew an unbroken line from Joel’s heart, across his shoulder, along his left arm, and in a long, slow scroll, wroteswell, backwards over his biceps.Reg took Joel’s wrist and held it while he wrote on the smooth, hairless skin where his watch used to lie,manacle of time...joining the dots around his wrist like a bracelet.Then, in a circle around his palm, Reg wrote,My sword will not sleep here.
Reg hadn’t intended to compose a poem, but Joel’s body inspired him by angle and hollow and word by word, possessing them both, and drawing them together.Joel’s energy pulled Reg’s hand and swept him along.
He wroteCold Crashon the edge of Joel’s floating rib andslipwayalong the fall and rise of his flank.
When Reg pressed the hard tip of the marker into the divot below Joel’s kneecap, Joel twitched, nearly kicking Reg, and Reg chided him.
“That’s my patellar reflex,” said Joel.“It’s involuntary.”
Reg picked out a fine tip marker, grasped Joel’s right hand in his left, interlacing their fingers and then, pushing the nib against the pads of Joel’s fingertips hard enough to make him wince, he wrote,SWOT.
He wrote a stanza slowly up Joel’s inner thigh while Joel grew more excited.
“It’s called ‘subtext,’” said Reg to Joel’s erection.“Turn over.”
Joel eagerly complied.
In the hollow behind Joel’s left knee, on the smooth, pale skin, he wrotecup of creamwhile Joel groaned softly into the pillow.
Pressing the marker into the arch of Joel’s right foot, Reg drew the head of a blackbird, while Joel laughed and squirmed, and Reg admonished him to keep still.
Reg crushed the frayed nib of the marker hard into Joel’s tailbone,Forte, and Joel’s body arched under him as he hitched against the mattress, and in quick, little jabbing strokes, Reg penned,Accelerandoup the small of his back, holding Joel still with his palm.Joel pressed himself into the mattress.
“Not yet, cariad, not yet,” said Reg.“On your back again.”
Joel was very disinclined to turn over and continued pressing himself against the bed for a few more moments before complying.
In indigo ink, along the valley of his groin, Reg wroteblue runin cursive, one word flowing into the next, and in three quick strokes, Joel came.
Reg eyed his handiwork, feeling pleased with himself, then wroteHere love liesaround the edge of the semen pooling on Joel’s belly, which moved under the marker as Joel panted, the dizzying smell of sex and marker making every detail seem sharp and hyperreal.
“How long did you last?”said Reg.
Joel let his head drop back to the pillow.“Oganesson.”
“Spell it,” said Reg.
As Joel recited the letters, Reg wrote up Joel’s belly, pressing gently, and underneath, he signed his name.
“The well has run dry,” Reg whispered, capping the marker.“You did brilliantly, my little muse.”
“Why didn’t you fuck me?”said Joel peevishly, still panting.
