Subject

Cayenne Bradley

I pose for him and he paints me. Sprawled on scarlet silk, a cat skull resting on my bare stomach. Bent over a crate of doves. Biting into a raw trout, its unseeing eye fixed on the viewer. Crouched with my hands over my face, his wife's jewels dripping down my throat. Tangled in a spiderweb of blue ribbon. Smeared in pig's blood with a headless doll clutched in my hands, as if I am the ravenous Saturn. Candle wax crystallizing on my breasts. Wearing giant angel wings, neck contorted back in spine-defying rapture. Mouth stretched open, a dead crab on my extended tongue. It's freezing in his studio, he keeps every window open and I am not allowed clothes. My nipples painful stones. I am paid nothing for it, and he doesn't sell or showcase the paintings; in fact, no one sees them but us. He has a locked room in his house devoted to me, a carnal shrine, and I'm losing my mind over what might happen, or fail to happen, when every wall is filled. Will he finally touch me with more than his cold, steady gaze? He is old, not handsome, and still I fantasize about it in the long hours spent trembling in awkward positions, building it up in my head to such a nauseous crescendo that sometimes the simple tactile act of wriggling back into my clothes can make me come. He's seen it before and just watches me with pity. No, I don't think he will touch me, for he has too many rooms to fill, too many young women to capture like beetles in amber. I am only a movable figurine, I have no name, my own hunger is of no importance. Or maybe leaving me aching and empty, emptied, is the whole point. I have nothing to feed on but the delicious question of what he does alone in that room with all my bodies. If I ever come, instead, to my senses and realize I am disgusted, it will be far too late. For now, I pose and he paints.