onan

We lie entwined.

"I just had deja vu," You say.

"Are you an atheist?" I sit up.

"I think so. I guess that means it was just my brain, right? Which can mean two things. Either I can't trust my mind at all, or it's the only trustworthy thing. It's either misfiring, all sorts of vulnerable little synapses lying in wait, or it's picking up the way time unfolds and refolds, even if only for a moment."

I wake up. You are sitting by the bay window, reading Pynchon. It is raining. You have tried to keep quiet but I am cold. My body is not little like yours, and not compact, I am soft bruiseable women curves, you are hard angular ribcage and can handle sleeping on the floor. I cannot let you into my house and so we sleep on the floor. I cannot sleep alone and so we entwined sleep.

I walk downstairs and outside. You live in the high hills and so I smoke, and watch mist cover the bay like your scratchy wool quilt, the one your mother made you. Because she likes you, you said. I stand in the middle of the street and hope life for two weeks will be somewhat like deja vu, deja vu, deja vu, deja vu, I cannot see enough of you.

You come outside and you look tender at my hair all knotted. You always look at me tender. You look at me tender and agree when I ask you to tattoo me before I move away. Or you offer to pay for it. You do not mind, money is no object, you only ask me of me. I gave this before you asked and you know this and so really, you are asking nothing of me.

"It smells like Berlin," I say.

And it does. Wet wool and wet air wet cunt and your wet skin, all mixed on my sleeve, I always make love to men who smell the same, I am only slightly sorry to say, and I have deja vu of a wet morning, 6 am, on a balcony overlooking Kreuzberg. I stand over cities and do not feel small or too tall, it's just about trusting that all these structures will hold me. Sometimes it leads to a bitterness not tasted by a life measured out in coffee spoons.

You want the posthorn and I want the muted posthorn. This is so fitting, I think. You drive me home. Thank God, I think.