1 minute read
Velvet Goldmine by Aydan Shahd
VELVET GOLDMINE
A pocket mirror becomes an emerald brooch, the homoerotics of Narcissus, the comfort of a belonging smuggled down generations: age 12, the nod from the Grown-Up dyke across the coffee shop, 20, the beautiful man in the park who holds your gaze and grins at your longing like he can hold it in his mouth, like he knows it. We hand these things on like jewels palm to glittering lovers’ palm.
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To know the sound of the things you want before you know the words, a tug every time you walk by a staircase in a doorway, the muffled cry of your name before it is your name from the rooftops. All there is to curl around is him forcing open your mouth, is him too loud in your head to resist opening. The most beautiful thing we could hope to be is a glittering refraction of this love! The plastic gold stuck to the hair on his belly. A clamor of stillness under the roar of our deaths and slick limp throat shrillness, a failure of voice when he’s close. It gives to laughter, he says
I know it’s silly but I feel part of a history of something. On my hand across his wet thigh, the ring he gave me winks in the dark, the green agate gleams.
