Monologue of Inner Ice
My head rested on the mound of his lower stomach. I listened to him gurgle and bubble, food moving through him and blood traveling quietly through his wide veins. Tears wanted to drip down my cheeks and into the coarse trail of hair drawing a line away from his belly button, but they turned to beads of ice and settled behind my eyes.
I wished that his love for me could be warm enough to thaw them; even the thought made me feel lighter. Little did I know that my own love would melt them eventually, but that he would be so cold toward me by then that they would refreeze on him.
But this came later.
“I’m here for you, little girl,” I imagined him saying. He didn’t use his tongue to say it. I don’t think he said it in his mind either. Then I imagined him reaching down to press my head to his core. Maybe that would have helped me hear his thoughts.
Instead, his fingers fumbled with the XBox controller. He rewound the TV show we were watching. He needed to rehear the part that he had missed when I had been talking to him only moments before.
I bit the small pout of skin over his waistband.
It was soft and salty, coating my tongue like butter.