Hungry Moon

Hunger

49 hunger What did he think as he led you down the dark hall, covered you with his blanket, put your purse on a chair? You woke alone in your clothes, his double bass on a stand at the foot of the bed in winter sun, pear-shaped, a voluptuous dressmaker’s dummy. You imagined his hands on the fat strings— grease under the nails, a blister in the web where thumb met palm. All that time you wanted to live on air like a plant, stretched taut, thin as paint on the walls, to make no noise, no awful thumping— weren’t you hungry, you stupid girl? You said no before he asked. ...