A few good times before it ends. He soon rests suspended and unexpected in a frozen morgue. Body shivers inside a slanted tomb both wet and hardened, because that’s what water does here. The chill doesn’t damper his dream of the embrace a week before. He made love to the woman. He communed with her lips. Formaldehyde as any professional in the field would tell you, is not necessary in this unique concordance of climate and depth. She allowed him to enter her to an acceptable depth, measured and proper considering the number of dates they had enjoyed and one she did not. The death record should indicate the cause of death was by avalanche, but nobody official has ever written that before and they all agree to asphyxiation. Her hips provided a point of reference upon which he could fix himself and balance down upon her like he had seen rocks balance, arranged so magically in urban gardens. They pay professionals to balance rocks like that. Professionals are needed to extract corpses from back country frostbite parlors, using hoists and helicopters and spirits hardened with morbid experience. Did the last moment of ecstacy between him and her happen in a La Quinta or at a Best Western? And at what elevation did she envelope him? He can’t recall what floor though the synapses still fire for some time. Electricity travels with less resistance as he approaches absolute zero, so thinking moves very fast. Thus all this remembering of her breath against his neck, warm and wet and soft and wet and warm. Rigor is something beautiful like a good joke found with nobody around to whom to tell it. She has a great ass he guiles his glove. And nipples are not just for babies he tells a tree trembling alongside. He feels like running naked down to mount’s base for some hot chocolate and marshmallows. Doesn’t the world think that would be worth it Seeing him lope naked down the slope, his flesh clinking between his legs like an icicle between two greying pistons, and if only the world would value such absurdities The world would make sure he would be only inches from the top and that hot sun. But he’s down deep, she’s reading about him now and the world isn’t having him any more.
Submission to the CL Literary & Writing forum Passing Time project