Massage

Passport stored in a basket, I press my face to a halo pillow so someone will touch and touch me. I wait within a synthetic cadence of ocean waves’ crescendos. The body is a lonely crossroads. At first you only hover, flutter. Then you lash and drub me like the sea. Your oiled hands stretch and strain. Your joints pass bone to bore into muscle. You keep me close to whimpers. For this I paid, but not so dearly. To see your eyes would be a violation, though I can’t say why. I feel your work is tougher than mine, for which I accumulate currently one point three vacation days per month. Plus sick leave. Your knuckles dig and ripple to unknot my pathetic stress. Soon a timer’s ding will send me back onto a sunlit sidewalk. Other things ding: Pavlov, Wall Street, boxing rings. One distal octave of piano keys. Buoys for boats lost in fog. Why do I hurt for tenderness— for fingertips, even accidentally, to brush the edge of my ear? I’m afraid to know your name or to learn of your many sustainings. The body can be a teeming reef, but the self’s a broken archipelago. I’m just the client in room 5. Soon I will go. But I’ll remember these impressions: ocean crest and break and cool caress—a place where pain almost ebbed away.