Reparando

Con una salchicha melosa y vegana que crece sin que nos demos cuenta. The only

response, of course, to Parajanov's pregunta: How am I to protect the wax-built castles of

my heart from the devouring fires of your love? I'm waiting for her heat, a pomegranate seed redding my bottom lip, the floor of my jaw weighty. My teeth have become used to her nails knocking for entry. My gums to her searching tongue. I've been brushing longer than usual, flossing enough for her to call through the bathroom wall. "I know what you're doing," as if I should be sheepish for expecting her. She once told me she didn't much enjoy kissing. Ahora, en las pocas ocasiones entre besos, she takes to nibbling on the bridge of my nose and calling me tolerant, as if I shouldn't want her bite threatening my sebaceous filaments, her fangs drawing blood.

We don't have any photographs together. In bed, I stare at the close-up of her blurred eyelids like I'm asking her lashes to prick me, or maybe for one or two to fall onto her cheek so I can press them to my chest with my thumb and make a wish. She’s always

clean in those moments. We take our showers in order: first her, then me. When she uses

up all the hot water, I wait while she scrolls Facebook Marketplace for deals on wheels. Or

tires, rather—I don’t really get the difference, which is why I call her when the oil change

mechanic tells me my old-man-beige sedan is one sharp brake away from sending a

wheel—or tire—flying across the highway. I pick at my cuticles while she talks to him. She

comes over later to inspect my vehicle and tell me I’m so brave.

She lets me drive her soccer-mom van while she works on my car. No me deja ayudar. I get it: I spilt petrol on my loafers once and had her pump the van while I danced to

roadside cumbia sin verguenza. It was her birthday. I got her a Hello Kitty racecar plushie that was too plastic for her preference, not to mention a different model of Nissan GT-

something-or-other than her favorite Tokyo Speed Racer t-shirt. She asked if I could get a refund. I said nothing. When I'm silent, she asks why I stop snuffling. She coaxes me by

drawing her whorl across my exposed brow, the rest of my face oculto en su axila, respiros profundos en esa oscuridad. Algunas veces me aprieta y comienzo asfixiandome with breath still in my lungs, like I'm too eager for the black to fade to blacker. Me deja jadear, still stroking my brow, until I bite her thumb at me.

The next morning, she asked why my parents wanted to meet her. Said she’d tell them I was her "spicy La-tina" in a no-good Southern drawl. We were never much of a church-going family. Sometimes I wonder if that should have made me an atheist, but I have too much faith, the kind I find in the eyes of every animal who holds or skirts my gaze. When I ask unblinking slits if they know they are loved, their silence is less an admission of guilt than an admonition for expecting anything other than truth. When she tells me she wants to be a woman for more than just her breasts, I simply find her irises. Her divinity is

kneading and needing, slinking and sweating, burping and mocking. Mostly my valley-girl vowels, rightfully disparaged. When she makes me cackle—those honest sounds—she tells me to stop, that she doesn't want to fuck Mickey Mouse. She tickles me anyway. I pin her down, whether she lets me or I buck up enough to fuck, mouse or not, though most of the time it's the other way around, my limbs straining in her vise, her haunches

compressing my cheeks. At the right angles, when she mutes my ears, my breath quickens louder over her fur, skull-skin acoustics ringing.

She falls asleep before me, enslumbered by my waist-strokes and our warmth, belly-to-belly, head resting on that border where chest leads to shoulder. Her drool slides

cool down my neck. Pools by scruff or sternum. In this lamp-shade sunset, I poke a hard-

won bruise, moretes de mordidas. They heal much too soon. Dissipating proofs of my

probes of her ankle skin, or the tenderness under her red cable-knit bra, her spring-time

shorts with the little fish patches, her shaved bush for a rave that never was. I stock root

beer and peanut butter and her third-favorite ice cream, the one from Trader Joe's. She tells me to take the job anyway. Offers to take the car off my hands, make it a bit easier to leave the draught where it's drying.

Before I sign the deed, I dream her bundled in her old Barbour coat, complaining about the stink and the snow and asking me why we're so far from the subway. I'll ask which

new-to-town doll bought Camille, my sweet Toyota. She'll roll her eyes about a wayward girl from Texas or Kansas staying down the hall and I'll have to shut her up by gnawing at her lip veins or her jugular, nipping at her discount-lotion reek. Saboreandola, I'll light a wick I haven't trimmed yet, daring the burn to tunnel.

Luz Rivera writes through the trans sensorium. Her practices are informed by liberatory decolonial feminisms. She lives on unceded Lenni-Lenape territory.