The peephole

I press my face against the door. You’re there. I see you. A bit. I see something that looks like you, and I know it’s you. The wood presses on my cheek.

I want to ask. Who is this? I know. I don’t want to ask anything else. I don’t want you to ask to come in. When you come in, you’ll hold me. I want to see the entirety of you, not this blurry bit of skin with that hair in a circle. When I try to focus on your face, you move it. I breathe.

Can I come in? You ask. I can pretend not to be there. Maybe you asked without knowing. I put my fingers on the door. I hope it doesn’t creak. You probably wouldn’t hear anyway. You’re probably drunk. But maybe drunk people put things together intuitively. I’m in my bonnet. I don’t want you to come in. But I want to hold you. I want to feel you inside me. I want to feel myself underneath your skin. I want to inhabit you when you get back out. I’ll travel right underneath your epidermis. There will be a shell where I once was. It’ll take a while for people to find it. And they wouldn’t look for me where I am.

Traveling underneath your skin. You can barely perceive me. But you can. You can try to explain it to people. I’m there. I’m looking at the world outside of you. I’m in there. Looking.

But I want to go deeper. It’s cold at the epidermis. I burrow in. You groan. You slap your chest, but I already made it. Too late. Too bad. It’s dark in there. Squishy and hard and dark. I move. It’s emptier than I had thought. I thought there would be something holding it all together. But there’s a cavity. I climb up. Your lungs squeeze me when you breathe. It feels good. All the organs are beating. Dum-dum-dum. I move in rhythm with them.

Can I come in, please? Come on.