Jon Flieger is the second runner up of our 2018 Grouse Ground Lit Prize for V. Short Forms! Read his piece, “Calgary” below!
Calgary
Standing behind you, he takes your wings in his hands. Crosses them before you. Holds you like that or makes you hold yourself, across what is left of your own body in his feral scarecrow hug. The thin halfmoon bones of your wrists held in the pulse of his grip.
He pulls you back and you fall into him, sitting in his lap on the edge of the bed, folding into him pinned against yourself. Against him. The beginning of his erection still indistinct beneath you. A circling shadow in the deeps but not yet an immediate concern. He leans forward and rests his forehead against the spines of your back. Holding. You can’t look back and see him, his head tucked awkwardly into your carapace like this, so you look ahead. See yourself in the sneeze marked mirror. Open-faced and horrible melting you but held there by him.
“You touch pulse points like this with another person,” he says, “hold hands, touch wrists, lean your temples together, whatever. You do it for thirty seconds. A minute. Your pulses fall into synch.” His head rolls slightly against your calcium shell. It is not uncomfortable.
You will wonder — years later, long after you have moved away — if he was trying to be romantic. If he wanted your hearts to beat together. Or if you sat there, watching the reflection of the thing he made, as he took control of even its blood.