At first, my husband Lou was akin to a saint carried in a pro­ces­sion. Back then, I didn’t know how to occupy the dark, espe­cial­ly when it was stretched out.

Left to rot, our mar­riage became that sound Lou loved so much, smaller than a cricket’s—my cries, an arsenal in his mouth.

Because we failed to quiet the animals inside us, we grew vicious—two swans locked in the bed, stink­ing, a wing of sweat opening, like an oven.

Now if I close my eyes, his smell—parasitic ash, swamp woods—runts me, until even the hollow my body makes is gone.

When Lou’s hand unfolds to strike me, it means every­thing can be for­giv­en, but never will be.

“Stop,” is what I tell Lou, but the after­noon is a suffocation.

“But,” he says, “death is the most beau­ti­ful posture.”

I agree. “Isn’t it because it looks like woe?”

“It’s sup­posed to hurt,” is how he replies. “Remem­ber how those drunk girls sang?”

When his voice rumbles, I mimic it, like a song on the radio, or an animal torn apart.

When I look at Lou, I can’t help but think about what hap­pened. It wasn’t a simile, it was a scene, an event, the way nothing falls into heaps of nothing, like a junkyard.

He stands in it. The house stands in it, night falls into nothing and the qui­etude, the first alone.

Wanting is ter­ri­ble. I know this as I stand at the kitchen sink. In me is a snail-sized fetus. It clings to my womb, a tiny clairvoyant.

When his hands unfold to strike me yet again, I yell, “You’re such a sav­agery,” but he hits me anyway.

Leaving the house, his face looks pock­marked as he replies, “Absence is a riddle. It both van­ish­es, stays.”

Once he’s gone, I think about what he’s done to me, which is why I haven’t told him about the baby.

In my body is the fetus, its utter imme­di­a­cy. The person I wasn’t, I’m becom­ing, but I fear Lou’s mind, its bony inklings which ratchet, like weapons, or tools.

Don’t I also fear the sig­na­ture of scourge, as he says, “Press your fingers into the wound, believe?”

Isn’t expec­ta­tion always violent, as is the sun, as is Lou, who’s a cut­throat? Isn’t this why we’ve never talked about the night we went out for a drive?

There was just the road, wide enough for the truck, the truck wide enough for the two of us to sit beside one another without touching.

There were no fences to speak of, just vari­able dusks. I loved the dust that kicked up, loved what a dirt road does to a truck.

There was no edge to the woods, just a blond path stretch­ing out of the dark green, like a leg bone, the radio catch­ing a hit station before moving onto static.

That night, in another truck, two girls rode ruth­less­ly beside each other—one filthy as a story, the other filth­i­er as a storyteller.

The truck smelled like a line of poured out gaso­line, old evening air, warm beer. We had plenty of time. We were in the middle of nowhere. When the music stopped, there was an embar­rass­ment of sunset. Why even talk about the stars?

The girls wore each other out is what I mean. Passed out in each other’s arms, like the end of a sen­tence while taking belts of whiskey out of a bottle.

The empty fifth one girl held in her hands is where the story turns dark, is where I stick myself against it, flush as a poster.

Both girls were breath­less. It was ruth­less knowing what was about to happen to someone who didn’t know what was about to happen.

As I said, this is where the story turns dark: the smell of fresh pine, the small task of rain on the wind­shield, the sound of Lou’s knife teasing itself across one girl’s col­lar­bone, then the other’s.

It was the teasing he loved, the sound of it like rust, or a stinger. And their fear, which was heavy as oil, but somehow fra­grant, like a doll’s fingerprints.

He then booted them out of the truck. It was like shaking dust off of a slipper. They looked ghastly. Each of their wiener-thin necks were ringed, like a cat’s tail.

My heart sank, as I put the knife back in the glove­box. Oh how my hands shook. I was staring at those girls, as they stum­bled, their high heels grind­ing the dirt, like thumbs pressed into one’s eyelids.

As we started driving back down the road, the baby kicked. Swiftly, deftly. I wanted to bag it in the theater of my womb, keep it from being mottled, or torn.

The dust nearly paved over what had just hap­pened. But those girls, they even waved, their hands, junky as fans, or a quaint piece of quiet.

God may have missed it all, but I didn’t. I saw how Lou held each one, licking her, like the skin off hot milk. There was a sacred­ness, a blank­ness, then every­thing became a fall, an exodus. I loved this, loved Lou, even those girls.

After the ignition’s click, only the scalene air, which tasted like immea­sur­able desire, but old, yellow, a fine, sifted dust, yet crisp, as in linen, or death.