I brought my old companion Jack D. up to my study. He’s almost done for—there’s only two shots left in him tonight.

There are some things in my life right now I’m not happy about at all. There are some things in my life right now that bring me that indescribable...

There are definitely things in my life right now that are improbable....

But what if and what for—and let’s keep dancing in this backwards tango—that’s why it feels wrong, the steps, the shoes—even the floor and the lights. I never was one for ballroom dancing… so let’s just keep it here, just like this.

I’m heat—my face pressed against the pulse point in your neck, where your scent is the strongest, where ancient and knowing vapors from the sex of your self—the entire you – leaks out from underneath clothes with labels and hair with color and spikes, and tattoos—painting and metal in your skin—because the pheromones—the primordial soup of your self, your sex—pushing into me as we hold, and dance slow so—slow and aggressive—don’t care for labels, or hair, or paint, or metal…

I smell you there, a quick whiff at your pulse point—a taste with the tip of my tongue, and…

I know you.

When we are not umbilically linked in our own version of dancing—because some say fucking is like dancing—and we’re not fucking—I am mapping the constellation of your skin, your freckles—your pores—all imperfection is perfection up close, because it is all you—each bead of sweat, each particle of paint laid below the epidermis—I will map it with my eyes, and because so much of our dancing is done in the dark—I will map it with my tongue.

I don’t want just this moment—this just before fall moment, a wind whipped over the cold body of the ocean, that dark vessel of secrets—something I would be sinking down into now if not for your dance, your wish—your want—I want more than the visible moisture vapor crawling like a wounded animal over our hills… I want magic. Magic is the act of finding a path between present circumstance and desired future.

Magic is these next few moments. Because I am here.

We are speaking tongues—in the dark, cartographers chilling in the change of the air pushed over the rolling glass night surface of that dark vessel of secrets—in our intertwined arms and wrestling lips… it not only speaks, your supple tongue, it can write in a rounded script upon my skin, a flowing cursive in an invisible ink that soaks in and short circuits. Your tongue sketches my body back upon my skin, cross-hatching in all the shadows, bringing attention to the details. After this dance you will wash me in a lazy bath, the catlick without the cat, the bed as the basin, and my stains stubborn.

But that is the dream of fall—and walks along the wet water vapor hugged buildings—are mystery to everyone but us, because at that moment—the chill sets through your skin and your eyes clutch me closer for warmth, you know—when your hold me closer, that this will never happen again.

We had met, and we had mapped—and you can catch my scent, my signature in the lightest breeze and be directed to me—in heavy-lidded selfishness of a single bulb you have seen all of me—all of my paint, pain, and secrets—tugged on the metal in my flesh, and where the dragons on my belly rolled