𝕮hapter three.

The way my unfamiliar name rolls off your tongue like it's liquid gold, sleek marble / carla / has something coiling deep inside me that reminds me of fear ━ not the blow-up pool death kind but something equally as unfamiliar as my name / it tastes of cigarette smoke, last nights dinner and something as bitter as my laugh and it's searing. It's searing itself into my gut like a branding iron and you can see in my eyes as I lie topless on the beach that I'm deprived and I need it. I crave the warmth because without it I feel as the sand does at low tide━ damp and abandoned and that's annihilation. To understand annihilation / think of hurricanes; their cutting winds and hailstones the size of golf balls and what they leave in their wake is not only destruction but upside-down lives, and the people of those lives scurrying like bugs when their home is upturned by a curious child / but you know all about annihilation because it grows like a stubborn weed inside you, your father pried open your chapped lips when you were just a boy and poured dirt inside.

So you repeat it, indulging me / and I learn to cherish your black sea voice / because you don't want me to feel such consuming corruption.

/ carla     carla      carla      carla /

━━ 𝕸.