Exceprt from Part 2, Chapter 4––'Spine'

When we touch where does it actually start? When we are one foot apart, or two inches? When we kiss where does the kiss begin? Is it when my lover leans toward me and I smell a change in the air, then his scent? Or is it when the conversation shifts temperature, ceases to bound forward, where it halts slightly, and his eyes look away, his body seeming to grow dense and planted before torquing in my direction? Or, is it when his lips touch mine? Is that when the kiss begins? When our four lips find each other? Is it when our mouths, having meshed like greased gears, find a sucking rhythm, or is it when the tongues meet, scissoring like the thighs of tango dancers? Or is the kiss only truly a kiss when our touching skins melt from pressures and textures to heat and wetness and, amoebic and formless, our minds slide inside the sensation? Is it when we no longer count who is leading and who is following, when we are mixed into simultaneity? We feel back and wonder where that kiss actually began. Where did I say "yes" or he say "yes"? Was there ever one moment or were there many, many moments? Was there ever a place where the tentative "maybe" was discarded and my answer to him was all "yes" and the "yes" was abandonment to timelessness, a complete surrender? Is there ever a complete surrender?

And finally the eternal "yes-ness" turns and the "no" begins to form itself into a cooling. There's a way in which my silky mesh skin becomes glassy and resistant. His heat bounces off my surface and I watch from behind a translucent veil before drifting my body away from his.