Daniel Coshnear

Nothing Wrong with Metaphors

“Like Eden, before the fall.”

“In summer?” I said.

“Shut up. Cometh closer.” She had this idea about skin on skin contact, something she’d heard. The best two people could achieve was ten percent, but we were going to beat it. We tried face to face and spooning, nothing you couldn’t think of.

"Putteth thine hands on my hands. Wait, the other way. Presseth our forearms together, the fleshier parts. Don’t laugh.” She laughed. “You’re sliding off.”

“Gondwana Land.”

“How’s that?” 

“Connected,” she said, “before drift.”

“Me Crag,” I said, which seemed like a primitive name.

“I Rik-rik. Always wanted to be Rik-rik.”

The good and the bad of her, us, is we could carry out a game … pretty far.

“We no argue.”

“Really? Okay.”

“We no dress. Stay apartment. Stay bed.”

I was about to speak when she pulled my head down, sealed my mouth with hers. It’s true I loved her.

Our relationship was in its infancy, but not something that needed caring for, or not much - it was an easy baby. She was in college two thousand miles away, visiting me. We didn’t have long. Three days. I’d take her to the airport, walk her to the gate, because you could back then. Holding hands, both hands, walking sideways, lifting her hair, kissing her neck, under her ear. The thought of parting made me ache, a phantom wound, maybe, some hollow place in my chest. Relief was holding her tighter.

But three days is a long time to paste yourself to someone else. Three hours is long to lie in bed awake. Thirty seconds is long, if you’re making a suction of your mouth, especially, in my case, when breathing through the nose is difficult.

“Excuse me, Rik-rik.”

She pulled my head down. Her mouth was warm, soft. I closed my eyes. Mild panic set in, like when I wrestled the boy famous for headlocks - though not quite like that - anticipating that. I pulled away, an inch, took a deep breath. She arched her back, and briefly, I felt cool from our sweat. Then warm again, when we re-connected.

“Who build fire?”

“We fire,” she said.

“Who chase woolly mammoth?”

“Trap set.” She pulled my mouth onto hers.

“Excuse me, Rik-rik,” I pulled back, two inches.

“No need names here.”

“Then why did we give ourselves names?”

“For outside,” she said. “We no leave, not million years.Anyway,” she said, “don’t argue.” She pulled my mouth back onto hers.

If I said I could hear rumbling, feel the earth shifting, that’d be a metaphor. We were close as two people could be. Or, in any case, close as I’d ever been to anyone. The world far.

If I said I could hear a tiny thing stirring, fussing, waking from a nap; that’d be a metaphor, too.

There’s nothing wrong with metaphors, but I knew people were not yet people in Gondwana Land. And I knew our baby, if we’d had one, would not have been the easy kind.