Potentiality

By Francesca Lo Basso
Collegian Staff
September 27, 2006

I had a potentiality for corruption half an hour ago, if he’d moved in closer on the vinyl couch, pressed his leg up against mine, the warmth of his thigh lingering. Half an hour ago, if he’d come up behind me on the dance floor, wound himself tight into my back, poured his breath onto my shoulder and through my hair into my ear, leaving the air there damp as though he’d kissed it. Half an hour ago, if he stood next to me at the bar pressing his side into mine, his leg over mine, his hip into mine, making me feel the thrust of the bone beneath the skin. Half an hour ago, I would have died for an instant.

But now he’s sitting next to her, rolling strands of her curly black hair between his fingers with the precision he uses for a cigarette. It’s her face he bends down into, her skin much deeper than mine, much richer than mine, glowing brown and golden under the lights that make my pallor spectral. It’s her lips he’s sucking between his, pulling into the curves of his teeth, biting with small precise incisions all the more beautiful because he’s there to take the pain away.

I tip backwards off the stool, head hollow, mouth cotton, knocking into the side of the table, trying to remember where the toilet is in this pub, down the narrow corridor on the left, behind two doors, into a stall where water sweats from the toilet onto the floor.

I hate myself for crying, for the way my mouth widens too large and my nose runs. I ball toilet paper in my hand, swiping clumsily at tears and snot, and push open the stall, the two doors, back down the narrow corridor, turning right this time, back to my stool, my half-finished bottle of beer, and I finish it.

lobassof1@lasalle.edu