Warm | Bodies Mtrjm Kaml

But moans are just words that forgot their shape.

Before her, my vocabulary was small. Hungry. Cold. Grr. Argh. Lights out.

I don’t know what it means. Maybe it was a song once. Maybe it was a name. The syllables land in my chest like coins in a dry fountain. Mtrjm. A translator. Kaml. Whole. Complete. warm bodies mtrjm kaml

I point at my chest. Then at hers. Then I make a fist and open it slowly—a flower, a bomb, a heart.

(R places his forehead against hers. No biting. Just pressure. Just a question waiting for an answer. Outside, the Bonies grind their teeth in the dark. But inside the plane, time stutters. A piano chord that was silent for years suddenly plays itself once, then stops.) But moans are just words that forgot their shape

We are the same wrong thing, finally correct.

I don’t know which is right. Language is a living thing, and I have been dead for so long. Dead things don’t speak. They only moan. Lights out

“Trans… late… com… plete.”

She stirs. Her eyes find mine. Most things look at me and see a corpse. She looks at me and sees a question mark with a pulse.

I don’t have the muscles for a full sentence. I have rocks in my throat. But I push one out.

“What did you say?” she whispers.