Night, and the Catching

This is the way it was,
     three days, four days, five, until your flesh crisped and smoked, and ran like wax.
This is the way it was,
     though through it all you told them nothing--for screaming is not speech, and there is no shame in it, no shame--
until in desperation they brought the master-god of hell: he who scorned the neural inducers, so-efficient pain machines, preferring to carve his flesh-art with raw steel, who threatened to write his name in laser-light across your eyes.

Him, you spoke to.

It was always her hair you remembered best, glowing spread across the pillow,
     slipping coarsely through your fingers;
the time it caught an earring and hurt her, and working carefully you freed it, bent to kiss her, the first time, your hands still full of hair.
     (She said she liked your eyes.)
But it was not her hair, cut short, you saw again. Her mouth told you who she was.
Her lips that reached for yours, still showing the false imprint of your kiss; her white teeth, a hovering bite;
her tongue twisting lies in the cavern of her soul.

You fled the torture, strapped to their machines
     (your flesh was burning, burning, and you told them nothing)
fled your body, that strange thick writhing thing
still screaming with its pain, the sound muffled
and alien to you, as from a distance.
     It was the way to bear it.
Did you go back, then, when you spoke with Shrinker?
Which of your flesh entangles you now?

Servalan is a throat, proud-taut and white,
     the ridge of her larynx underneath your thumbs, on Sarran.
If you chewed that flesh, still it would show no mark.

In the dark, now, your hands search across your body.
Are you caught in a corner of this shroud?
Hair (they yank); the eyes that Shrinker would have autographed;
pinch the nostrils and the bellows suck air, noisily, through the mouth.
     Intake, exhaust.
Ribs cup the soft, soft organs like fingers.
Could your hands plunge through, to squeeze the slick things until they burst and ran?
Your life is here, but not your soul. Go lower.
Stomach, more hair, genitals - best not to think about it -
     legs, feet, surely not here?
Have you, then, slipped this tattered cloth?

The hands twist, uneasy, and brush against each other.
Grasping fingers, palm to palm, discovery and recognition.