It was a whisper like something small clawing with dull nubbed digits along the folds of my ears: “there’s nothing you can do.”

And a dense weight on my chest. I can feel the whispered breath smothering me. “It’s no use. There’s nothing you can do.”

…and I’m reminded how long it’s been since I went shopping. Not buying things. How grotesque. Changing filthed dollars for items. For property. For things. Buying things is a complex cost-benefit calculus transaction between you, your needs, desires, dreams, and paycheck, and I’ve never been good at math. But, gawd, how I miss shopping. The leisurely stroll through American shopping malls, floating through the weekend crowds, salacious jetsam on the steady stream of consumerism. Looking at everything. How piped in sunlight ripples off of courduroy, gives the mannequin’s head the inner glow of love, or dreams, something far away from there. But I don’t miss seeing these things. I like to close my eyes, run my hands across the armies of fashion standing ready in the Mall’s endless garrisons of boutiques, chains, and brothels. Victoria’s Secret is a favorite. All the satin. Lace playing a game of hide and seek beneath your tentative fingers. The warmth of velour. The tease of soft cottons, like a garment of tiny kisses. I haven’t been shopping in so long.

It is deceitful to tell a woman you love her while she comes, and foolish while you do so.

An incurable, rushing fever — eyes: wild — an insistent rosey bloom seeping out from the heart, an oozing fungus assimilating the nervous system while contagious delerium infects the lymphatics. This is the position of lovers, number 38.

Sinking into pools of their own flesh, melted in the heat of their fevers, they scramble frantically, clawing one over the other to keep themselves from drowning.

Sometimes, fearing the malnourishment of the other, one, rearing up, peels away their dewey skin to reveal their soft pink underneaths. Thankful claws tear at the belly, ravaged chunks gummed and swallowed half-chewed. Fingers sink in up to the last knuckle, slipped between the others ribs.

Sometimes, the hair will be gripped, and, reluctant at first, the scalp resigns itself to giving way, uprooted like a tenacious weed and greed teeth chew meatball sized hunks of brainmatter. Syrupy brain fluid, spilling over the top of the skull, forms runnells at the temples. Thirsty lips will suck them there and trace their length from the source to the estuaries formed at the collarbones.

This is the position of lovers, number 38.

I’ve littered little nothings, scribbled on scraps, like bread crumbs, behind me. They will not take you home. They lead you to a witch’s candied house where I will bake you, and enjoy each nibbled morsel.