Thrust: A Novel

On the seventh day inside Aurora’s apartment, Lilly rolls her tongue around an apple between Aurora’s legs. Laughter. She can smell and taste the salt wet. Lilly bites into the apple, hard enough to hold it in her mouth, lifts her head, spits it to the floor, bites again into the pulp of Aurora with an ungodly hunger. Breathing. Kissing. Sucking. Tonguing.

Lilly’s fingers inside, one-two-three-four-five — a sea creature entering a water cave until a rhythmic thrusting emerges from Aurora’s hips a flip Aurora topping Lilly’s back Lilly biting down into feathers Aurora eating Lilly’s ass spreading her legs tendriling with her arm octopus up to cunt the other mouth of her has it been hours and hours or days and nights and days sun washes the room through the ceiling-to-floor curtains the color of alabaster the walls midnight blue the carpet bloodred sun washes the room night wave washes the room time moves between bodies the sheets wet smeared tangled necks legs a longing eating into a longing a life eating into a death the bloodbeat of it.

Days.

Nights.

I used to have one leg
My beloved cousin made me another
Then a girl came to me timeless
I want to give you something

From under a pillow Aurora pulls a coil of rope the colors of a corn snake Lilly the model on her belly anticipation lodged like the touch of dreams between each vertebrae Aurora the rigger pulling Lilly’s arms behind her Aurora binding her hands tender gentle torque not then tender gentle torque a gasp please if there is a god or a universe let this time of binding pass slowly or let this language between bodies break time then on to ankles the knots are practiced the knots are loving the knots are tightening with any move Lilly makes Lilly wants to move the torque the gasp of it

Aurora stands

Lilly waits

A kind of death this waiting

Aurora standing

—

Aurora pulls Lilly’s body up and up hoisting her lifting her off the bed into suspension Seiu Ito painted his pregnant wife hanging from ropes whispered into Lilly’s ear the art of it the wet of it the torque of it the ropes taut between Lilly’s knees dividing the lips of her labia up her belly crisscrossing her back arched her legs bent her arms bound behind her a kind of thick hard corset rope stitched across her back the little bulges of arm bitable the woman hanging from the ceiling carabiners glinting rope the color of corn snake caught bird arched swallow strained neck eronawa a whisper semenawa a whisper or a dare Lilly screaming yes except silent the language their bodies the language the tug of the ropes on skin their language eye to eye no one sees the girl enter the room with an object no one sees the girl leave there is just this language of desire this is only Lilly’s suspended body there is only Aurora tonguing her limb by limb then nothing and into the nothing the everything suspended

Apple

Tongue

Aurora

Cunt

Axolotl

Hips

Thrust

Days

Water

Sun

Moon

Cave

Brother

Torch

Umbilical

Ehnita

Father

History

Red

Indigo

Rope

Whale

Wail

Waves

Sapnuoti

Uu

Ohne: ka

Suck

Blood

Boy

Girl

Liberty

Treaty

Timir

Dream

Desire

Motina

White

Theft

Room

Snake

Vandens

Boat

Motherwaters

Yakon: kwe

Nights

Leg

Turtle

Arm

Epistle

Yakut

Uol

Imaginal

Story

Kııs

Birth

Blue

Hand over hand, her eyes locked on Lilly’s body, Aurora slowly lowers Lilly to the ground; unties her lovingly; massages every line made from rope on her body; holds her like an infant; kisses her; coos to her; slips her sips of water warm blankets the subspace and afterwhere.

Entwined bodies.

I will hold you forever beyond time even just for now — though look, but just now, look there, look at the object in the corner of the room.

There: a bloody toddler boy, naked and wriggling and laughing, his fat little arms outstretched to the two women drenched in their own pleasurepain.

“What the fuck are we supposed to do with that?” Lilly hisses from inside Aurora’s embrace.

“Use your instincts,” Aurora says, petting Lilly’s hair.

“I don’t have any instincts for that kind of thing.”

Aurora gets out of bed, walks over to the toddler, and picks it up. “Then use your imagination. Tell me a story about your brother.”

Lilly pulls the bed covers up around her like a child might. “I loved him so much. It hurts.”

“Then tell that story,” Aurora says. And she nestles the child between them.