It was warm and wet everywhere. Everywhere there were hands or a mouth. Something for each one. Hard and soft. I moved between them like the three of us had always been together. Bank$’ broad shoulders felt like a shield; something with some with some real weight behind it. You –look- so- damn –good. Bank$ said into my ears. Just-like-that. In front of me were Sigrid’s open arms, spread like a crown. Afterward, Sigrid passed out and Bank$ and I were still slick from sweat.
“I feel like a fucking baby, shorty,” Banks said laid back with his hands behind his head. He looked a little dazed.
“You’re very welcome,” I answered and laid myself atop him again. Who wanted to leave this earth with a thirst?
“You know you some familiar for somebody I never met before.”
“Am I?” I sat up, palms pressed to his chest. “Maybe from a past life.”
“I think you exactly right about that.”
In the morning, Sigrid snored under the matte gold sheets. Bank$ brought my boots up from the theatre. He sang as he fingered the battered leather and placed the shoes next to the bed table. I had dug the cowboy boots out of a heap of beat-up things at a fire-station in Texas.
“I almost didn’t come out behind these ugly ass shoes.”
Bank$ laughed out loud at that, and Sigrid stirred but remained asleep.
“How long you think you gonna be in Atlanta, Kalo-nee-ka?”
“I don’t know.” I answered him right away. What else could I say?
Bank$ stood in front me and I put my chin in the cradle he made out of his hands.
“I know one thing…you had a more perfect night than that lately? I know I haven’t.”
It was true and that was something to hold. I knew I would spend the next years in a fugue trying to name what I had lost, trying to arrange and rearrange the debris of bones. But for now, between sight of Bank$’ bare chest and the light coming through and reflecting off the back of Sigrid’s red -head, for a second, it was almost like I was home.
Kristina Kay Robinson 