What You Always End Up With

by Jensen Whelan

Her apartment is on the first floor and because of this smells strongly like the Chinese restaurant that sits squat and permanent at street level.

I was visiting when it happened. When I made it happen and she let it. We were talking about a colleague of hers and she grabbed my arm and said, “I feel mixed up. Like everything is in the wrong place.”

She told me she was scared and let me kiss her on her cheek, very close to her mouth. I said, “Let me help you.”

I used a different pen for different parts. On her left arm, where I wrote ‘right leg’, I used a ballpoint with thick, blue ink and scribbled the words quickly like a signature. Both of her breasts I caligraphied onto her shoulder blades. Just under her navel, in confident block letters from a marker I wrote in her eyes. I switched her elbows and her knee caps around, replaced her fingers with her toes and inked her hands into the space left by her hips when I pushed those around to the small of her back. I laid the flat of my hand softly on her abdomen and decided to move her feet there.

Mary didn’t say much while I was working. Occasionally she looked interested but I think that was more for my benefit than anything. She looked at me at one point and said, “Do you really think that my mouth should go there?”

“No, I guess you’re right.” I moved it to the bend on the underside of her elbow.

When we were done, it was late. Mary went to bed and I fell asleep on the couch. I woke up to the dull light of morning being slurred throughout the room.

She called my name.

I followed her voice into the bedroom where I saw her on the bed wrapped up in her sheets and blankets.

She pushed them off and showed me her naked body. I had never seen anything like it. At first all I could think of was how she had managed to wash off the ink without waking me up with the shower in the middle of the night. The labels were gone but everything had moved to the new place I had given it.

Her mouth spoke to me from her arm which was now her leg. Her breasts were no longer on the front of her body but had resettled on her back. Her eyes stared up from the soft skin beneath her belly button. Her feet gently protruded from the top part of her stomach. Her toes stood where her fingers should have and flexed slightly when she stretched her body awake.

I stood above her bed looking down at what I had done and tried to concentrate on a body without a focal point.