The Fly

Where we almost, nay more than married are. —John Donne Pearl egg of fly intimates the curve of larva, its spine and claw point. The cellophane shell, brittle pupa blanket where the almost fly lies like a spring. Coiled and tensile, its exertions will tear the sheet. Six black legs flutter against the dry christening gown, I see his lambent eyes cloistered in these living walls of jet. Small glider, his veined wings are sheer parasols, gauzy skirts that admit the light. The orange down of his pelvis beneath this architecture, blood is the adhesive fastening flight, my sleek aviator presses his sucker feet to my lips. How little he denies me, the drone in my ear and he swarms my heart if one two light steps from the tips of my fingers he bows his head and makes a violin, or hovers behind me when I circle the floor, lonely, he rests on shoulder, elbow, to stare at me with swollen eyes, darkling, drop of ink. A currant in the sugar dish, he models in the painted flowers, black eye of Susan, blunt thorn—he delights in my decadence, the slippery floor, tiles, and stairs haunted with illness: my sensual life and his intersect. He comes on the wing of another spring, in slicks of grey water, the pendant sun. to navigate what is unknown to me, patiently, he regards the chrysalis of skin that envelops the arched veins. Incurious and constant, he is used to waiting for the modest blush, the rustle of disrobing the hush. Of silks unfolding, of gossamer veils drawn as tenderly as breath, from the fluent sea of one blood made of two, the sweetness of his pestilent kiss.