The door slammed loud and rose up a cloud of dust on us. Footsteps follow, down through the hollow sound, torn up.

Standing next to her, drink in hand, you let your guts fall out through your mouth, pink with guilt and wet with lust. The liquor oiled your words and they slipped like eels through your lips; you told her the mistakes you made and the grain of salt she took tumbled around in her head so much it shone like a diamond. Too scared to say it to my face you tried the next best thing, spitting slurred vowels into her ears while she stood, eyebrows arched, unimpressed. Across the world I read those words and they sucked all the weight from my chest, I deflated into the upholstery of a cheap chair and my eyes rolled into my skull, dreaming of your ever-absent limbs and my wordless confessions tangled like veins behind my eyelids. Now I remember another night, another bar, a darkness that pooled in our pupils and the smoke from endless cigarettes cobwebbed about our heads. "This just feels right." I'm surprised you could feel at all. Meanwhile, the words churned and broiled like fire ants in the bottom of my belly as I tried to drown them in beer. I fought with the liquid side of my instinct, the side with the soothing voice, the side strangled by fantasy. A syrup-swollen whisper lined my ears with cotton, it whispered, "Tell him." But science always wins with me. Logic and doubt swing in like fists on either side of my skull and knock the sense into it. Reason marbles the corners of my mind in a thin-lined patchwork, impulse is fenced in and desire is dehydrated until it's dust. I microscopically examine whatever we are until it becomes colourless, pressed between panes of glass, cold and unable to provoke emotion. Although tangible, the motes of unspoken want remain too thick to hold.