Creative Nonfiction

written by Michelle Spokes | illustrated by Kim Herbst

when we were at a fetish party watching the man who used to be your dom demonstrating how to snap a whip, you pulled me onto your lap — as a statement. your arms wrapped around my ribs so tightly i could only take shallow breaths. my heart beat. my pussy pulsed. you held me there, making your claim, until we left mid demo, your hand holding mine.

the first time we held hands in public, walking across a parking lot, i hoped someone i knew drove by and saw us.

your finger stroking from the bridge of my nose to the tip and back up again, a trick to help me fall asleep. worked every time.

the backs of your thighs resting on the fronts of mine when i spooned you and the tops of your thighs tucked behind mine when you spooned me.

the smack of your hand, the red welt shape of it on my ass. the circular warmth of your palm smoothing away the sting.

your eyes looking into my eyes. my eyes deferring, looking down. my eyes diverting to your mouth. your mouth directing vibrations of gratitude and devotion into the canals of my ears. the buzz of your words moving in tune with my myocardium.

when your mouth overlapped mine and your tongue exchanged the taste of cheap wine with mine.

when the sweet smoke in your throat exited your lips and rose to the roof of my mouth then settled in my lungs. because i declined a hit, you became a bong.

your tough, mischievous, uneven smile. your mouth opening as you laugh. my palm cupping your shoulder, your elbow. us with our jokes snapping like rubber bands, talking at the same time and still understanding each other’s fast minds.

the mascara wand between your thumb and forefinger, gently tugging my eyelashes. when you exhale, your breath soft on my face. the playful swish of the blush brush over my cheekbones. you saying, ‘now look at me,’ and biting your lip as you assess.

the day you decided it was time to instruct me. handing me the mascara. demonstrating. taking turns with me in the mirror, in a tiny public bathroom, laughing.

my foot on the carpet and the little brush between your fingers painting my toenails red.

every week, new colors on your nails, even yellow one time, one time blue, seasonal colors for holidays. rainbow for a trip to cherry grove. the pad of my index finger tapping the new color scheme to acknowledge. smooth nail polish or a slight texture to an overlay of sparkles.

your skin smooth as satin, as baby powder, against any part of my body. you slather lotion on after every shower, free samples lifted from where you work. there are boxes you’ve given me, tiny bottles of aveeno, cerave, neutrogena and so on in my linen closet. i’ve made the post-shower routine a habit, too, but my skin isn’t as silky.

your arm through the crook of mine; my stride awkward, syncopated, trying to match your natural rhythm, swagger and sway.

the hum and purr in my elbow when my phone’s on the desk at work and a text comes through. the thrill in my veins when i see your name on the screen. every time. my thumbs tapping letters, punctuation marks, spelling out our own version of shorthand, scrolling for bitmojis, and gifs, racing with yours. messages whisking through intangible space like dragonflies on certain summer days.

flannel sheet under us, portable speaker playing “no place i’d rather be,’ a jones beach bass boom behind that, my head on your lap. my face looking up at the underside of your chin, at the blue blue sky. you leaning forward and me in the perfect spot for that.

your tongue sucking tequila from my belly button.

while you drive, your right hand on my inner thigh.

all the times you’ve headed south, and peeked north from between my knees.

the vacuum in my stomach when i need to hear from you and don’t.

the birthday you wanted to be alone and didn’t even want me to visit, and i drove to your rented room anyway and wiped your snot with my sleeve, pulled you close, kissed you all over your face, and your tears wet my lips, and your lips were puffy against mine.

when the hinge of my hips balanced on your windowsill, hands bracing forward motion, feet out in the night. you’d called repeatedly and told devastating secrets in a strange voice, then hung up. i found you asleep. you woke up groggy from sleeping pills that shouldn’t have mixed with your meds. the next day you denied calling. the list of recent calls on your phone proved you did.

the time you arrived at my house on a cold winter night as i finished a shower. each of your hands landing on each of my breasts, so pink from the hot water. a reversal, since i’m the one with cold hands and yours are small furnaces. somehow these lyrics spin into that moment: ‘story of my life… i drive all night… i spend her love, until she’s broke, inside.’

my body hiccupping with sobs and your voice. my body seizing with orgasm and your voice. my denials, my confessions, my stories and your ears, your interruptions, your questions.

my temple against your shoulder blade as we sleep.

……

some months after you found your man, i sat on a rocking chair watching you on top. i fixated on his pale, narrow, nervous feet and how they didn’t move.

when you and i lay down on your bed, equally ready, our eyes, lips and legs locked. we intensified. he left the room.

when a flattened silence lay in my throat the whole week you two were gone on the road trip. you met his family, envisioned life there instead of here, and began planning for that. the hollow crackle of those summer nights.

your flattery, his happy blush, my lungs filling with air.

the other night, my own man hit a spot inside that hurt, that your knuckle, when you’d wriggled your fist into me, had also hurt, and in a burst of pain, quick as strobe lights, i was with you, then back with him.

at your place, content, present, snuggled next to you on the couch, my cheek against your swollen breast and my forearm resting across your round belly.

in my backyard, springtime sun on our faces. my daughter talking to your belly button, introducing herself.

at my house, your hips between my knees. the heels of my hands massaging your back. this body of yours, wider now, speaks of change. we already know how to work around a baby’s life, finding time for just us. already know how to walk beside a child, each of us holding a hand, counting to three, then swinging the light body up into her own laughter. already, we can imagine my daughter holding your newborn in her arms. not sisters, but just about, for a little while.

your back to me as you sleep in your bed. my arm slung around the width of you, my hand wide on the warm, taut skin. i feel movement. my eyes brim. the motion, however, is rhythmic. it isn’t the baby. it’s the effort of your breathing. a week from now, your hand will tug mine, press it low against your belly, and there, a hello, swift as a fish, will find my palm. in the meantime, my forehead finds a resting spot against your shoulder blade for the night.

for a time we will have a brief island of balance before you leave what has been us, to reside further than a day’s drive away from me, and slip out of reach, maybe fall out of touch.

Michelle Spokes’ piece surfaced during yoga practice. The study and teaching of both yoga and writing have revealed to her that not only the mind, but the body, too, can carry memories, often in a symbolic way. Her work appears in the Oyez Review; siren; Fireweed; BellyDance.One; the anthology, A Wake Up Call, edited by Jan Phillips; and 7 Veils, from Hay House press.

Kim Herbst is a half-Chinese freelance illustrator who spent time in Taipei, Tokyo, New Jersey, Baltimore, and Brooklyn before heading out to reside in San Francisco. Her work has been featured in newspapers, magazines, children’s educational materials, and gallery shows.

The Free Clinic

It was getting dark. The millennium was about to turn over and under the shadow of the second Bush administration the clinic would be shut down. We sat, waited for her name to be called, for her to be taken into the back to sit on that crinkly paper, scratching at her thighs.

Borderland

I was walking yesterday evening down a dirt road winding along Maine’s infinite shore. I was looking west, toward the setting sun, and didn’t notice the doe on the east side of the road until I was right next to her, practically close enough to touch. Deer do this sometimes, allow you to get surprisingly close even as they remain piqued, ready to run.

Dear Nnamdi

I shouldn’t show up today, but I’m coming to your wedding. The American wedding. I will stand when the minister asks if anyone objects because I do, and I’ve always wanted to attend a wedding where that happens. I’m a law student, I know how to object. I’ve got evidence to sustain. Your poems. Dick-pics. Clothes in my dresser. Toothbrush in my bathroom.

Café

The cappuccino machine whirrs, clicks and sings. It sends out a deep hiss, a musky sound, as resonant as something from the throat of a big cat. The air is sugar-scented, the trays are loaded with bite-size confections, aspic red jellies on circlets of biscotti, dabs of meringue, blobs and swirls of chocolate.

Sex with Indians

The Institute was where I’d been working since age twenty-one, an Institute “devoted to ending violence against women and girls.” In reality, it looked nothing like an Institute. It was a former bookie’s office set above a fancy San Francisco Chinese restaurant.

Chrysalis

At one end was the Interaction Section — bubble machines, drones to fly, crafts and building activities. The busiest was the Technology Zone — banks of screens where small fingers swiped and tapped, the odd shriek as a wailing victim was dragged off to be fed.

body memory

The King of the Jungle

It’s about emotional engagement, he reminds himself as he puts on the kettle, not exposure. Their customers will love that they’re giving back. Even if they don’t tell their friends about it, they’ll become more loyal to the brand. He stares at the sea for a while. It’s the same dark grey as the granite countertops, as the sky.

When the Rains Come

There are the war machines rolling down the street in all their military glory, wreathed in jasmine and marigold garlands. They are affectionately known as war elephants, because underneath all the glamour the bulky tanks are gunmetal grey. They belch out plumes of black smoke into the already polluted air. Despite their decorations, they are colossal beasts made of pistons and steel, lumbering about the narrow streets, and yet there are still vendors who walk fearlessly beside them, calling out their wares.

Queen of Wings

He got that way from eating pieces of string like they was noodles with sauce on top and everything, and string beans, and nothing else. But out in the woods the girl and him didn’t have much of anything to eat. He was too proud to farm in the dirt and he was a lousy hunter. They would have starved except the wolves took pity on him and left out a few scraps of rotten meat.

The Balloon Loan

Just for a moment, I hesitated. Outside my locked glass door, I could see them still swirling around, the dreamers and the idiots. Money trembles at the top of their bank accounts like beer foam, just waiting to spill out. You can see it, how the wanting sweeps through them like a fever. You can see it in their eyes.

Between the Wish and the Thing

Out in public, you tell your colleagues that the two of you have become “close friends.” That you are strictly platonic confidantes. That your connection is akin to a brother/sister bond. That your conversations are equal parts vapid college anecdotes, light-hearted work gossip, and generic commiseration. That even if there was more there, you don’t even find each other attractive.

Music Our Mothers Made

Our mothers were wolves. They roamed the great, cold northern night in a pack, electric purple van screaming down county roads from party to party, where they caught boys named Jesse and Jason and James with their abundant thighs and sharp eyes and clever tongues.

Mike Doesn't Seem to Want to Join the Other Dogs

She looks ordinary, though she has terrific posture because she’s a dancer. She has wavy brown hair and thin lips and isn’t afraid to lock eyes with me; then she begins to look better and better, telling me all about her meditation, that she meditates every morning, though she’s never had any instruction. When I ask her how she knows she’s meditating, she says she just knows.

Succulents

I was laying on the grass by the bubble stream listening to Tribe play out of the speaker cone of my rock. Watching the bubble bubbling. Pink nettle cactus and tall frond trees all around. Not much else.

April, Quakes in Kathmandu

You announced you were coming with the roar of a supersonic motorbike revving. You had us at your first knock. The billows of dust clung to the windows, which had unlocked themselves. Still, the curtains danced, and the glass cracked. I remembered what I held. We were arrested without the cuffs. You clanked the plates together; we tumbled.

Stones

Lonely tantrums. Eyelids. Adhesive bandages. Mother says that you have taken a course. Mother says that you can intubate a man and shake his stomach back into its sac. You sent her a copy of your stamped certificate.

Bedlam

The bed we bought from Sears, a sale, a snip, and it became to us the all but boundless sea, an ocean even, on which our bodies, those separate ships that did not pass in the night, but met, came alongside one with the other, grappled together, rocked together, joined, conjoined, a nautical act of union upon the white-sheeted waves our urgent

A Rare Spark

The accumulated weight of days. That’s what I told her. When she asked why I was still in bed. What the fuck does that mean. What it means. She said she was done. Well, so am I. Like a steak at Denny’s: barely edible and covered with sadness and salt.

Sophie

Sophie dropped the sentence into the room like flour. It formed a thick, white cloud that, once spoken, she could not wipe from the table. There was an empty chair where Robbie should have sat. While the ice machine crunched in the corner, Sophie’s hands grew into the table. People getting their morning coffee didn’t notice her.

Ting's Tale

I hate cats. At least I thought I did. I was in the midst of a whirlwind a couple of years ago, writing a book about Emily Dickinson, who also hated cats. Seems her kid sister, Lavinia, had a whole kingdom of cats, and the poet found Lavinia and her cats as vindictive as King Saul. I had other reasons to look at cats a little aslant.

An Accounting of Small and Large Catastrophes

Then I gave what was left of my heart to a losing battle, knowing the end of the story before it began. Terminal: years or months or weeks. My parents worried that it was too much for me, all those hours of driving and the hours spent sitting by her bed. I took the heart from my chest when it became too heavy to carry, and kept going.

Birds Want to Kill You

It’s best to wear a hardhat when feeding barred owls. There is always one asshole among them who will dive bomb your head. Maybe it is the same one each time and that fucker just has an attitude problem, or maybe they take turns. It’s hard to tell.

Preschool Remembered in Hashtags

Adults spoke through hissed genealogies, the early tantra of tongues disguised by complicated trigonometries settling in the corners made by angled remarks rather than traveling the vistas of straight lines. Realizing perhaps to be considered smart like my brother Jonah involved mastering pointed comments, the art of pricking people with words.

Better

The only thing he laughed at was a plastic fan we bought from Ace Hardware on clearance because that summer was blistering. We moved the fan into his bedroom where it ran all day and all night. The fan made him flap his arms as if he believed he were a bird.

Hypothetical

Wouldn’t you have to choose someone dead,” I say, “because I mean come on wouldn’t that be amazing to bring someone back from the dead wouldn’t that be wicked but wait though would they still be dead but dug up and woken up like would they be all gross and worm-eaten and rotting or would they be at like the prime of their life and healthy ’cause that makes a difference or wait what if you choose someone dead but you didn’t realize you have to die to have lunch with them and then it’s too late to change your mind because you already made your choice

Breaking the Hand That Feeds You

Some suggested voice-to-text software. “I don’t write that way,” I explained. They shrugged their shoulders as if it were an excuse. Words come out of my fingers differently than my throat. Sentences surprise me. Ideas are more organized. Words flow instead of spilling over each other.

He Named Himself

Lyrebird, rumpled Australian ground fowl. He sings the song of a gas-powered chainsaw. He hears it every time a pink-cheeked forester cuts a flank of the landscape, then mimics the brattle until it synchs. Lyrebird named himself as a way to lie, maybe, delights to clack and tick like the strappy gear of a bird-watching troupe.

In Lost Time

The first thing you hear your father do after your mother leaves is laugh so uncontrollably it hurts your insides. He’s a large, large man, and you think of all his blood hitting fast food joints on its way through the capillaries.

The Margin of Error

She counted the number of words in each love letter, the duration of every phone call and every kiss, counted each petal on each flower in each bouquet. She quantified the warmth of his hand on hers with an infrared thermometer. She tallied the expense of his gifts, accounted for every drink, every meal. She timed his eye contact.