Fiction *** Switch’s hand brushed across my hip as he reached for the lock. I pressed myself to the door and his fingers fumbled blindly at my back, pressing skin to the steel teeth and plastic plate of the motel key. It found its groove and he twisted. The door swung open and I fell backwards into the brightness of Switch’s room, his body pressing against mine. Missing the bed we broke the urgency of our kissing and laughed wildly on the carpet. We wrapped our arms around each other and sunk deeper into the soft, woollen floor. We held closer and closer, pulling everything tight into our ourselves, trying to fill up the microscopic spaces that exist between cells. That kind of knowing and absolute occupation of space seemed possible for the first time. The Colonel was emptied and so were the streets. All life seemed to glow from this little room. Whatever mystery coursed through Switch he was here now, animated by something ancient and magic. A conduit for an invisible heat that rushed into me. We would never be strangers again, at least not to one another. Even in the morning, when I was gone and he was picking at a scab in the earth, there’d be this. I stretched out my leg and kicked the door shut, sending a shutter through the old motel. Our embrace deepened, and with a sudden, gentle click, the lights switched off.
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