In my pale cocoon of diffuse light I lie still as the grave.
Mummified in white paper, every inch of me wrapped from head to toe. Each tiny movement, each shallow breath makes crinkles. Supine upon your bed, I blink and my eyelashes make rasping sounds against the paper that covers my face. This close, I examine the intricate weave of the paper, its fibers pressed into fine meshwork. There is a century’s worth of information here, if I am serene enough to see it.
I could raise my arms or spread my legs and be free of this shroud. The fragile tissue would tear with ease. Sometimes I hallucinate the sound of it ripping as I move.
Sometimes the sound is real. From time to time you come to me, press your mouth against the paper until it almost melts away, and burrow a little hole. I’ve felt the tip of your tongue on my hip, the tip of your finger just above my knee, the warm pad of your thumb on the rounded curve of my right shoulder.
You sample me through keyholes, spacing out the occasions until time becomes an unbearable burden.
At night I dream of moving, of sitting up. I see my gift-wrapped form tear loose from this bright grave. But I don’t move.
Time has grown insignificant.
I am a prisoner of patience.
I wait for the day you open a little hole at my mouth and kiss me.
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