il peut, mais il ne veut pas
Tuesday: He walks on the beach, and the sand is fine enough to grind his feet smooth without him hurting. He’s gone that many days without them bared to light; they’re always clenched up in boots so tight his nails are stubs. He is thinking. He makes a list. His nails smell like tobacco, palms like fruit skins, elbows like sand. Neck like the oily balm she had used on herself, reminiscent of tar in the sun and lip-shaped, pressed into his skin. He thinks he hears the sea, the mild crash of waves like her mouth into his hand, the foam from her spit, her unsightly crave for body into body. Nature, for once, becomes unpleasant, though he sees the sun, a slit through the shutters of the clouds, triangled over the water, and all he wants to do is jump into the cold sea and swim out into an ocean, stroke out till he reaches a different continent where no promise of ache and longing lies, only a day-to-day apathy, lazy, fried and pasted to his body, an inescapable lack of need to care.