I imagined the body attached to the face on the overpass: slim hips, smooth skin, hands like a piano player’s, skillful, fleet, cold, and hard-probing. Gripping my shoulder, they would pull me close in an urgent kiss like breathing air after years of drowning in muck. The tangle of our body parts would be irrevocable, staining each other with our fluid lust, moans from our lungs with the power and earthy resonance of bagpipes. From the pressure and heat, we would emerge as chimera, patchwork bodies in a patchwork town where nothing fit together neatly except the two of us, a two-piece puzzle set glued fast, tight, and complete.
I began to believe I might know whose face it was as memories swirled like chill wind through gaps in a house’s framing. It was a fantasy, a lie; I knew that. Some
