green and it’s living light and living rock and you can’t see the
blood, old blood generation after generation for thousands o f
years, as old as the stone, because the light heats it up and
burns it away and there is nothing dirty or ratty or stinking or
despondent and the people are proud and you don’t find them
on their knees. Even I’m not on my knees, stupid girl who falls
over for a shadow, who holds her breath excited to feel the
steely ice o f a knife on her breasts; Amerikan born and bred;
even I’m not on my knees. N ot even when entered from
behind, not even bent over and waiting; not on m y knees; not
waiting for bad boys to spill blood; mine. And the light burns
me clean too, the light and the heat, from the sun and from the
sex. Could you fuck the sun? That’s how I feel, like I’m
fucking the sun. I’m right up on it, smashed on it, a great,
brilliant body that is part o f its landscape, the heat melts us
together but it doesn’t burn me away, I’m flat on it and it
burns, m y arms are flat up against it and it burns, I’m flung flat
on it like it’s the ground but it’s the sun and it burns with me up
against it, arms up and out to hold it but there is nothing to
hold, the flames are never solid, never still, I’m solid, I’m still,
and I’m on it, smashed up against it. I think it’s the sun but it’s
M and he’s on top o f me and I’m burning but not to death, past
death, immortal, an eternal burning up against him and there
are waves o f heat that are suffocating but I breathe and I drown
but I don’t die no matter how far I go under. Y o u ’ve seen a fire
but have you ever been one— the red and blue and black and
orange and yellow in waves, great tidal waves o f heat, and if it
comes toward you you run because the heat is in waves that
can stop you from breathing, yo u ’ll suffocate, and you can see
the waves because they come after you and they eat up the air
behind you and it gets heavy and hard and tight and mean and
you can feel the waves coming and they reach out and grab
you and they take the air out o f the air and it’s tides o f pain
from heat, you melt, and the heat is a Frankenstein monster
made by the fire, the fire’s own heartbeat and dream, it’s the
monster the fire makes and sends out after you spreading
bigger than the fire to overcom e you and then burn you up.
But I don’t get burned up no matter how I burn. I’m
indestructible, a new kind o f flesh. Every night, hours before
dawn, we make love until dawn or sunrise or late in the
morning when there’s a bright yellow glaze over everything,
and I drift o ff into a coma o f sleep, a perfect blackness, no fear,
no m em ory, no dream, and when I open m y eyes again he is in
me and it is brute daylight, the naked sun, and I am on fire and
there is nothing else, just this, burning, smashed up against
him, outside time or anything anyone know s or thinks or
wants and it’s never enough. With Michalis before he left the
island, before M , overlapping at the beginning, it was
