Mako Date

When he’s tired he never sleeps or even closes his eyes. She doesn’t seem to either. Instead, she picks her scabs and skin like bananas, peeling back her hairline, flicking chunk and shed towards the corner of the bed- room. She dabs blood with her pillow case until the run stops then tastes the cloth.
He climbs into the sheets and sets his body down sideways, letting his spine touch all the other bones in his body before he rolls over slowly to stare at her skeleton.
“Not bad,” he says. “It all looks so natural.”
She pulls all her hair back into a bun and licks her gums like an orangutan.
“My back hurts,” she says, running her fingers over her gut. She taps her ribs, chipped like old piano keys. “I think it’s the floor,” she says. “It feels too crooked.”
He pulls himself onto his feet and dunks both hands into the floor. He rips up a dozen wood planks, holding them in his hands for several seconds, whipping them around if they feel light. He sticks them under the bed to prop-up the springs with splintery planks of hot lacquer.
She tells him it isn’t working, so he shrugs and opens the blinds slowly by the peal drawstring.
“You know that movie?” he asks.
She yawns softly and shakes her head.
“Where the woman is eaten by the shark?”
She pictures her skinless face – cheekbones spaded like daggers – and runs her fingers along the lip of her bald jaw.
“I could swallow you,” he says.