Post Mortem

The bolt remains shot in its iron housing. The violence in my chest slows to a heavy, drug-thick rhythm, and the room settles into a cold, dense air, heavy with the scent of dark amber, cooling sweat, and the sharp, salt tang of our undoing.

Across the crushed linen, skin clings to damp skin with a heavy, static friction. High on my collar, a dark smear of your lip-rouge lies crushed into the weave, a crude, indelible seal pressed over a quiet crime.

There is no soft light to restore us. No polite retreat. The sharp, precise border that kept you sovereign and me distinct was ground to dust between our ribs, dissolved completely into your heat.

My thumb rests in the valley above your hip, feeling the small, involuntary tremors as the wetness cools between us on the mattress, slowly locking our skin together like dried ink.

Neither of us offers a word of mitigation. Neither reaches to pull up the sheets. We do not ask how two people who pride themselves on iron composure could end up so utterly wrecked, so viciously exposed.

We lie still in the sobering, addictive quiet of what we’ve done: knowing the transaction is sealed in salt and bruised flesh, the line between us permanently erased, and neither one of us looking for the key to the door.