Liz Berry

There is an alley where you can go, where you can kiss someone’s mouth until you climb inside them, force your way in, push your cells into their cells and become one creature — angelic. It isn’t the way you’d dream it. There is piss, dew-damp moss crawling across the brick. Some nights it is so dark you must enter only by touch. Walk by in the light and it will seem like nothing. The scripture is written by wenches: 4eva, L+ J, I.T.A.L.Y. A heart jagged in two. But what you’ll make there it’s not love, it’s not weighed down with that, it’s feather, air, an at-once exultation of being not of this time, this alley, this shitty good for no one, shut-down town. I never went there, I promise you. I never knew such sweet violence. Though there are mornings now, miles from that place, when I wake with the thought of it: wet and bitten, half- winged.

And slowly we’m sweethearts atween the wet grass all river-licked, lime dust in our hair and both of us so frightened, blind as moles. But wanting something. Wanting. We’m side-by-side on the grass, me barefeet in the water, bowing our heads, gentle as osses at the water trough. I can feel his shoulder ashiver and it makes me bold, makes me jumpy, so I hold out me ond till he takes it and kisses the palm like he’s eating sugar from it and we’m off ...