Train
Jay Tailor
Here is a photograph Alan sent, showing the long, thick incision running from his breastbone to his pubis. Surgical staples make a sort of train-track of his flesh. His whole torso is naked, ribs rippling like grassland in a strong wind. He is a small shire seen from a plane. White gauze squares cover the holes they put in him to allow his peritoneal cavity to drain. The gauze patches look like blocky buildings, flattened by height and distance.
Staring, I am drawn by the magnet of the incision. I place myself at his bedside, my back to the window and my dark body limned in the white early-morning light, a black standing-stone edged with frost. I am a scribble in the margin of his awareness, a figure in an opiate dream, and I leave a lesser, flickering, buzzing trace on his skin. I wonder if he feels it. For a few moments I do nothing but watch him breathe. Then I sit down beside him on his bed.
I reach into my pocket and pull out a tiny toy train, which I gently place atop his long wound. Do I travel up to the foothills of his ribs? Or is my terminus the grey stubble where they shaved his pubes in prep? Where should I stop? Should I stop? The little wheels squeak over the staples. He opens his eyes and there I am inside them, a black sun captured in each iris.
It's cold in his hospital room. I bend low over his body, the miniature train now clutched in my fist. My long coat slides across his covered legs, the soft leather of my sleeve brushing his skin as I put my face close to his chest. I lean my cheek on his sternum, feel his heart beating strongly beneath my own flesh.
I want to touch him with my mouth, want my tongue sliding across his hipbones beneath the drainage cuts. I want to open my lips over his left nipple, warm it with my breath, roll its hardness on my tongue like a sweet. I want to travel his incision in kisses. My mouth waters. I am all the hungers of the body. I am the synesthesia of longing. I must taste, must touch, must take.
I turn my head, press my face into the hollow below his breastbone. My mouth opens on his skin, and I breathe deeply. I touch him with the tip of my tongue. He inhales sharply but says nothing. I lick him, at first with restraint, then in luxury. I trace the lower edges of his ribcage, feeling the crinkling of the borders of the bandages covering the drainage incisions. Slowly, slowly—paths of saliva left on his skin dry before I complete each long meander.
He thinks I am not really there; he’s just told me so, half-accusing, half-amused. Shifting slightly, I take his hand, and he knits his fingers around mine. My arm rests gently across his gauze-covered groin. I open my mouth over the uppermost point of the great incision, where the two edges of the wound do not quite meet. There is space enough between the lips of this wound for me to place my little finger. The staples hold him together, but they must work extra hard, here, so close to his heart.
I expect him to flinch, but instead he relaxes with a sigh. My tongue flicks over the staples. I slide the tip gently into the gap between the two edges of skin, then back over the surface of the staples. His incision has that mysterious sweetness old blood possesses, that iron taste of molasses, but there’s a salt tang too, as his body carries on its work of healing, making more blood, knitting his gut back together behind the seam that splits his torso. I lick downward along the length of the wound now, my tongue riding the bumpy gathers and tucks over his belly. I feel him harden suddenly against my arm. I think of the other bits of stapled flesh inside him, wonder if I ought to show some restraint, but when I try to pull my arm away he squeezes my hand tightly. His meaning is clear.
I continue my work, learning every inch of his incision with my mouth, with gentle bites from my small sharp teeth. Soon he shudders and clutches my fingers with unexpected force. I feel the heat of his ejaculation through my sleeve. Sitting up, I look at his face.
His eyes are closed, his expression difficult to place. His mouth slightly open, he catches his breath, and his brow is creased in a frown of puzzlement and post-orgasmic grief. I watch him calm himself slowly, and after a few moments I hear, beyond the drawn privacy curtain, the door of his room open and close. As the intruder approaches his bed, I stand up, and at the sound of my own heavy boots scraping and clunking on the floor, he opens his eyes once more. They bore into mine; now I am being taken, remembered. Wordlessly he squeezes my hand again.
And the curtain is pulled aside, and the nurse is rendered speechless as I return to frost-furred shadow, and Alan slowly lifts his hand, fingers opening like the long petals of a lily, revealing the tiny train resting on his palm.
Jay Tailor is a poetry and composition instructor in Chicago. Known primarily as a collaborative artist in various media, Jay is currently investigating the nature of language through cut-ups. He finds hospital security protocols unwieldy and has a chubby for Tristan Tzara.