Strategy

The chess pieces are placed in rows, occupying the checkered squares like soldiers, one missing here or there as if a rook and a queen went off to bed together. A king, overturned, a cleft of stone missing from the base, a denotation of shame. The white pawns have a jaundice tone to them where the afternoon light is muted behind sheaths of clouds. The men are slouched in the metal furniture, bulky and overcrowded in their Levi’s, flannel and work boots. The man closest to me taps his index finger against his temple, a single vein protruding there like a river on a roadmap. A cigarette collects ash in the overturned coffee cup. The man swipes at the corners of his mouth with his thumb as if he is about to turn a stubborn page in an old book, then retrieves his cigarette. His eyes remain fixed on the pieces. His opponent drags a hand through brassy strands of hair that shine in ripples like light on water, the tips skimming the seams on the shoulders of his shirt. His eyes scan the board as if he’s skimming prose. He retrieves a rubber band from around his wrist and pulls his hair into a low-slung ponytail, a few strands freed from wafts of air, lifting away from his face, flitting around his square, set jaw and nudges a pawn forward with his knuckle.

My pen is paused over notebook paper. Through the glass I watch a muted aplomb, these men whose large, stained hands, poised over a chessboard, move pieces with such care and precision, in a game of attack and capture, a strategy of calculation, trust and betrayal. I scoff to myself, “most men would prefer football.” The man with the ponytail wraps his palm around the porcelain mug to his left, sips, his lips left wet, rubs the back of his neck, pulls the loosened hair in the rubber band a bit tighter.

That flaxen hair, escaped from the grips of the rubber band, on my neck, grazing my collar bone, draws paintbrush-thin lines of perspiration across the tableau of my chest as he dips his head to taste the salt on me. He would move invisible chess pieces over my flat stomach with his fingertips, talk to tactics versus strategy. He’d retrieve chess pieces off his dresser and place them across my torso, the cold marble or stone resurrecting goose bumps. He would trace pathways of the bishop at queen with his thick and apt tongue. He would smell of ginseng and aftershave, a little pine, and taste like maple syrup.

Through the glass, pawns lay in a small cardboard box, a holding cell for traitors, the board absent of its kingdom except for a few survivors. The sky fills with billows of pewter clouds and raindrops leave track marks ageist the window. The men show no sign of leaving. The stray strands from his ponytail cling to his forehead, matted, as the rain comes harder. He plucks a black knight from its occupation near the center of the board and moves it a space closer to the peripheries of the board. His opponents king stands vulnerable, the pawns captures and unable to protect him. Beads of water collect on his mustache and beard, dripping every so often onto the nearly empty board. And the sky opens up with hot light and sound. The rain comes. And I do not know their names.

Invisible Love

Sometimes I wonder what kind of lover he would be to me. He is versed, knows how to love a woman without complication. He appreciates the beauty in body parts like knees and ankles. He likes bruises, sees them as inkblots, a way to define a woman by her marks and scars. He will find a bruise and swipe at it with his fingertips as if he is reading brail. He reads a woman's body with his hands, his nose, his mouth. He get to know her, to love her by her smell of coffee and tea tree oil, the taste of salt and chamomile on her shoulder blade, the way her hair feels like corn silk through his fingers.

He would disagree, affably, to gifts on holidays and, instead, on some lukewarm summer morning I would find a note written on a napkin or old envelope from an electric bill that's already been paid. It would be written in methodical, masculine scribble:

Hey you,

Didn't want to wake you up. Made some tea and muffins for you. Booberry, your favorite (see what I did there?) I almost woke you to tell you how beautiful you look in the morning with the sun on your face and you breathing through that little space between your lips? I even think it’s sexy when you snore. I don't have to tell you good luck with your writing today because you don't need it.

You Know I Love You.

And I would save all of his little notes in a paperclip and keep them hidden in my underwear drawer. His love would be purposeful and informal. He would love me best in one of his white shirts, dewy from a fresh shower, a mop of cropped hair pushed away from my face, ruddy and spry. He would be tactful, keep me wondering and perplexed about his love for me from time to time. Loving him would be like a puzzle with pieces missing, so I’d have to go searching for his secrets. Secrets he’d tell me in bed, a little winded after making love and coming with my name on his tongue. He would pass storefronts and be reminded of trinkets I’d like or books I’d read but would only buy them if the wind was blowing the right way, wind that felt like my breath in his hair. And we would cook meals together, assigning each other tasks. He’d wipe tears from chopping onions, and I’d lick the sauce off his index finger. Our arguments would be heated; we would yell, push each other around and go to bed with our backs to each other. And in the morning his chin would be in its usual place between my neck and shoulder and we’d converse in sleepy murmurs until the sun beckons us from the landscape of twisted covers. This is how I would love him.

How to be the Other Woman

-Photo by me

Fragment Chpt. 1 (Maybe?)

Ravish.

…In his car where both of your breaths come in thick, laborious exhales and mist forms on the windows. Trace shapes and letters in the condensation, bite your lip and look straight ahead, and when you look at him, make sure it’s only out of the corner of your eye. Appear coy, but don’t allot him your full attention. Make him believe your indifferent. It’s in the deception

Read his thoughts through the dirty wordplay that you tease each other with. Be aware he is taken but ambivalent…at first. Fidget, play with your stockings, stretch out one leg at a time, re-adjust your skirt, massage your own neck with your fingers a bit to let him imagine his teeth there.

Maybe you’ve only seen her once and you can feel your brow pinch and your mouth dwindle into a tight line when her eyes flit over you from a crossed the room.

Or, just the opposite, you treat her like a new friend, compliment her shirt, her bag, maybe her shoes, tell her you should have a girls night, grab a drink, laugh at her one-liners and make sure he sees you laughing with her. Be recklessly detached and risk the scars left behind, disfiguring and permanent.

*

At home, paint your toenails red and listen to jazz while you shower, hum through the steam and stream of water. Let the vapor settle around the peripheries of the bathroom, touch the crevices of your body where condensation has formed, touch yourself in the way you know he would, with two fingertips. Let the water soak each part of you and be proud of the dips and ellipses of your silhouette.

Your hips jut and gyrate when you squirm. You dig your heels into the floor, or the couch or bed, or backseat where you are laying with your jeans around your ankles or skirt pulled up past your knees. You have bruises, beauty marks for your legs, faded, the color of thistle and a halo of yellow. You can let him take your shirt off but leave your bra on, and don’t loose your underwear in the heat of tugging at his hair or latching onto his shoulders. Don’t be that kind of girl to misplace your underpinnings. Know that he is good with his tongue. The climax reminds you of a warming stove, steadily building heat until your red with the impatient longing to come and he stops and runs his bottom lip up the inside of your legs until you grab his hair and tell him not to stop between gasps. Make him the best; tell him he knows your clit like no one else. Make him believe it when, after the warmth of his mouth, you finally come in purrs and moans. Let your muscles give in, let your legs shake, smile at him when he looks up and you from where he lays his head on your stomach. Be silent and listen to his breathe.

Don’t let yourself be existent because of what men think of you, or think of when they look at you.

Try not to wonder what he would think if he were to see you in the early hours of the morning. Believe that he would still find you sexy even with morning bed-head and stale breath.

Lie. But not too much. Or rather, see it as leaving out details.

*

If she sits and closes her eyes these men become mere flashes of skin, and shades of blue and brown irises between blinks, and bits of conversation and dark spaces and the flushed skin and swollen lips after.

The desire to touch

And she thinks about the way he articulates certain words

Words that would normally be banal with any other person but he draws them out on his tongue like he just exhaled smoke from a cigarette

“They've got so much detail. They're soft, expressive.” This is why he loves women, and why she touches herself in exploration. She tries to see what he sees. She wants to turn her cluttered conversation and awkward stutters into confidence, build up her quirks into something she loves. She wants to turn a bare shoulder to people who look through her or who laugh at her. She wants to take her insecurities and turn them into effervescence, blow bubbles in the air, turn people on with her laugh, stand with her spine elongated, collar bone worn like a modern piece of jewelry. She loves to be touched, an arm slung around her waist, a palm resting on the back of her neck, a hand finding hers. She loves the warmth that two bodies make on contact. The of her body define her tone. Her curves are punctuation marks.

The way he touched her, he was discovering skin for the first time.