Olive oil burst on an iron skillet. . . He faced years in prison. Heavy curtains, no longer braided up by rope, left a thick, hot, din in his room, as if he were already preparing for the padded state in Triple-CMS--the psych-ward, hidden away from general population, (with concrete bed, metal toilet, plastic-skirt)--long before he would forge the metal knuckles; crowned with shanks that darted off the rings; so he could stab the laughing prison guard; who stood outside his cell; swinging a taser-gun around his finger by a leather cable; mocking him and his cellie, screaming, "shut the fuck up; you're an abortion," which created an orbital gale of wonder in the cold, shameful hallway, twice a week, to which he would one day reply with, "the Holy Spirit hates you," or "I decapitate Nephilim in my waking state. Await the Day of the Lord, when your heart is heavier than the feather of truth, and you suffer eternal hellfire." The pale guard would walk away; another would push a tray through the Judas-hole that aligned with chins--stacked clumsily with two slices of bread, two baloney slabs, two mustard and mayonnaise packets, and a fist-sized box of low-fat chocolate milk. The phone rang under a clothing-heap in the den; he stared at it, though did not answered it. Barking "Odin" to scatter the crows that littered the black branches of trees, through his window, did not reinforce in him the suspicion he still was in the present---still in the house, still waiting for O's letter, which allotted him comfort, when the Fever came upon both of them; and, there was nothing left to do, but answer the call of love--another a kind of prison, a cell of guts and juice; with adrenaline, the warden. 
   He cracked open a carton of eggs, musing on her flesh, her curves, the violence of her appetite; and yet the 400mg of Seraquel in his blood did not quell him, nor sustain the caustic temperature of better angelic transoms, which would allot him other omelets for other women; or commands of a basic text that he used to read aloud, prior to his fall from grace, in college. For he donned one true lover in his soul; it was always O, and only O; and, he knew other influences---sexual, criminal or intellectual---were distractions by which the world could seem more just to him, with the mad dash to understand the common human problem—of his numerical distinction; in a globalized monstrosity; wherein lovers were traded in for lovers every several months; and, the exposure to one’s own image, left him grasping for the breathless passing of something false. For he coveted O like he sought the streets; they were familiar, with his boots upon them. He knew who he was and where he was. He knew it in his sleep; he knew it hanging upside down on the pull-up bar, between the living room and kitchen, or by shutting a carton of eggs, plashing five into a sizzling skillet; shaking burnt fingers, assuaged with tongue; running then to the faucet, whilst thinking of war, how he was going to save his tongue for it. Yet, the LED display on the microwave read 11:11. The faucet was shut off, his mind was not. He sniffed her on his fingers, unable to tell the difference between an hour and a day; for he was her entrager, her stone, her czar, her breath, her swinging locket of time, the penultimate assassin of dogs and gods. He knew the score and knew the stabbing in L.A.’s Skid Row had nothing to do with him, neither did the dead kid in San Francisco's Tenderloin; and he already understood, with moral dexterity, that O, too, was in the throes of an uncertainty that co-signed by a living madness: which was to collect the slivers of what was good in him; fearing never to become whole again; out of self-inflicted vengeance--with a sure-fire cognizance of the ability dissect one’s woes, and untimely hopes; yet, still allow for crude psychic wounds to be eclipsed by the runny scabs of all-inclusive trangressions, which was precisely the reason he raped her. He stared at the pan. What was it with love? He lowered the flame. To measure love by loss? The best reference books of mankind had not rekindled the tender fire that glowed lavender at the limit of his spiritual imagination. For the answer, to what he was doing, and did, in between reading her essays in academic journals, (or seeing her on T.V.--activities that promoted the veneer of health), did not describe the nature of the melancholic sickness; the thorn chewed greedily by lover’s lips, as he remembered how they met in a Roman Literature class, four years prior; how she wanted to get fucked by gods--Pluto, Zeus. Thus he thought of her as he walked to the fridge, then closed the fridge; pondering the pendulum of time; swinging to the East, and backward, towards the West; spanning longitudes of sorrow for the sake of one cool prayer that mocked the Titans before they're born. Come to me, my love. Come to me. He shut himself in, within the voice of her letters, the testament of day-dreams. Give me your hands. Give them to me. I am here with thee a while, though my body be hardened by seasons. I be with thee a while to know the dawn-tinted puffs of our baby's breaths; its tiny curled fingers; slapping darkness; whittling silence; as we await the Morning Star which rises at night, and gives a Sabbath to those who long for redemption; unlocking shackles from ankles that have bled; attached to those that are meek; who never see the light of day, lest they be loved or are in love. Do you need my love?  Do you need it like a man who is parched?  I give it freely. . . .
   He ate his eggs, while considering the battlefields of the earth; aeons of immeasurable oppression, which too, sang and sink like lovers do, when they see what is worth fighting for, and hear the irrational voice of eternal seasons, the very voice of Love, most High, most reverent---leading Special Forces to the brink of doom; a sealed fate by sealed lips, inspiring the aphasia of kissing feasts, demolished limbs, whose foundations break, where lover’s kneel, to accept the judgment of love which is marked by Time. For the reply from the silent well, in his mind, echoed with vigor: that thinking about love was nothing; there was and is one life; and what a shame, he thought, that time did not preserve them; their flesh and what’s inside it; to feel how much they felt; to lose how much they lost; to know the word ‘forever’ and speak it clearly with golden eyes.

   Thus, he finished breakfast, quaffed coffee, sitting on the coffee table--setting the playing cards aside that he used with her when she would arrive in the middle of the night--in a furry-hoodie, and a bag of books, and sit down with him a while in her orange bra; having undone the zipper, jiggling her breasts at him; smirking at him; as they threw back vodka shot after vodka shot, for hours; talking about everything that could exist and would exist--even Murphy’s Law--before the Creator of the Heavens and The Dark Lord within them; which chained them up; bound them to The Cat O’ Nine—the weapon for their intellectual banter and sexual desecration. They sought the sacred in the sickness, yet it was right and never trite; no tittle of the law was broken. Her flesh was bruised; it bled often. They might as well have been fulfilling prophecy--for such is the message of the whip. But now this? Prison. A dingy place to sense her lurid touch--that O, that angel, that never ceased to let up--not in Paris; certainly, not in the aftermath, in that cabin in the snow--where he flung her over his shoulder, and took her down to the billiard room; and, behind a couch, having had beaten her hips and her ribs; marking her, even lightly, per diem ad infinitum; wherein he shoved his seed inside her, knowing she was the only one who deserved such tenderness---and the release that was born only from minds that stir with dark imaginings; caving alone, for what seemed like forever, at desks, trying to analyze the meaning of it: sitting near a stack of poems that crowned the top of a wooden tinder-box, stuffed with the dry, curled petals, of flowers--of symmetries picked clean: there, upon a tablet of blank paper, 500 Sheets of Nothing; waiting there; as he got up, got dressed, then walked back into the kitchen--to enliven the electricity of his flesh; and recall his beloved Muse, Friend, and Slut; and, repel the need for sleep, whilst another mode of finding love swept across his soul, should he awaken with her love ringing in his ears, lining the slit of closing eyes. He crossed lines; she drew in bruises; lashes striped the servant, the perception of perfection. Tomorrow was then; today was a forgotten mishap, which he wasted wondering if O would testify, switch sides, and reveal the nature of their game to the court. For, like O, he considered himself innocent, alive—and, innocent. No blood congealed heavier than the boiling blood of Truth: how he longed for her and waited for her: her naked, on all fours; coextensive with the solution; as the creature she played for him and was for him, defiled by him, then replenished by an stacked infinitude of shame--to love the cold wind of victory and the scent of a Spring that made them Homeward Bound