sunset indoors

His mouth is sicky red, cheeks flushed and riding high, skinny nipples twice dotting his chest. Sweaty curls crest his forehead above the fine fragile brow. He has fever.

I look at him detached. He was never my lover. There is a long ugly scar along his goosebumped hip from some internal external war now encased in past. There are streaks of pen on my hands from writing letters that do not mention his name. Outside the sun is gorgeous setting, colors I have no name for, fire-golden linings. I am in this chipped room with a stranger.

Burroughs's junkies were less than human. Is he? His veins punctured, teeth gritted against that overwhelming morphine need. Pale lines on his fingers where heavy rings once nestled. He'd punch the Man in the jaw with them, break teeth, until their opium worth trumped revolution. The family crest pawned.

One of his toes is a stump of infection, nailless and blind. Even his feet pitted with injection welts. I cat's-cradle my hands and look at the gray blanket he lumped off. I keep my eyes off his shoulder skin pulled tight.

Some tall innocent puts his tan hand on my back and I shudder. "You don't need to stay," he says, surfer-white teeth and gleaming generous muscles in his neck, the scent of outside gloam on his tailored wool coat. "You don't owe him anything."

I nod, not sure what I mean. We all owe him everything, this dying man-boy boy-man propelled and floating through delusion, his blood running fast to catch up, his heartbeat thrumming like a mouse's. A bubble stretching and popping in the corner of the thin red mouth.

"It's nothing to do with you," says the pumpkin-grinning outdoorsman.

I twist my fingers. I stand my ground.