Crowded Creature

The mass breaches away from me each time I move. I list side to side and it contracts and expands, a lung on the dancefloor. Inside the sweat-steam of air and sweetened breath curling tenderly around the mass I close my eyes and for a moment, it stings. Then I feel you grab me by the arm, and I know it’s you by the way the pads of your fingers grip my slick flesh and my breath has gone, risen and dissipated into the entity while it distends, on a warpath, swallowing each of us one by one. We meet eyes, now in the middle of the chaos, while the pulse of the music reaches fingers fully inside my chest.

You sway as in a trance, gaze untethering things inside me I did not realize I had tied down, and I want to own you, make sure that you can never belong to anyone else. My restraint weakens as I notice each rise and fall of your chest, transfixed with the ways I could fit myself inside and shift around, and my regularly scheduled catastrophes cease to exist. Now there’s only the quiet, and the sway.

With your hands on me, gripping me, my resolve drips to the floor and puddles underneath my shoes. It reaches the entity and slickens it, forming new enclaves. It devours me, and then you’re lost and we’re on opposite sides of it, and I fear I won’t find you again, adrift in a headless rush, bodiless hands caressing everything and nothing.

When I find you at last, the shape your mouth makes in the darkened room is a beacon with my name on it. Your thousand-yard stare into my core tells me there is no mistaking: you are mine alone. The tempo changes, and the creature begins to bend and lull, at last tiring. It sighs heavily and within its newly abscessed pockets, folding heavy arms around us, we meet once more, in the middle.