Nothing to You by Mary Wharff
"damn, I know you asked me not to do that”
Fiction by Mary Wharff
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He doesn't say excuse me, or damn, I know you asked me not to do that. Not when you want it, I had asked. When what he wants is me, my lips, breasts, thighs, the place he calls his purry. Meow, he sometimes likes to tease.
He doesn't say excuse me, so the wind, his wind, it does what wind does. Things shift. Not the brass headboard or the stack of literary texts beside his computer or the real purry purring on a pillow beside our heads. There's no quake under the magnolia outside or up the stairwell, nothing knocks against the door of our apartment. The plastic blinds still blind us to the sun and stars and night.
But things shift. My husband farts with his hand on my breast, his knee between my knees, and what I am is done. All hesitation leaves me, like I left my father in the church aisle on my wedding day. I do not try to grab it back, like I could, like I have before and before and before that too. I do not scream how could you, how could I, how will I? I do not care that I am being silly. Now he is on top and I am naked and open and doing what I have never done without love before.
His weight presses. I wrap my legs around his back, kiss his neck. I lick his ear the way he likes and reach to the spot that makes him sound like I have stabbed him. I do not cry for how I will not miss the cat.
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Mary Wharff makes chocolate torte using 28 ounces of dark chocolate. Her writing has appeared in the anthology, The Frozen Moment and Connecticut Review, Room Magazine, Water-Stone Review and others. She lives in Lawrence KS because she likes her sky big.