Fiction: Second Skin
From the evening of our first fuck until the afternoon that I buried what was meant to be our child within the mineral-rich, Midwestern soil, I collected his essence within a wide band of porous leather that I kept strapped around my left wrist. As his most primal aspects had, over time, seeped into the fibers, the once stiff cuff softened and molded to the curve of my arm like a second skin. Suffice it to say, I carried him and each one of our shared experiences with me everywhere my journey led. I wasted nothing of our early encounters. The sweat that ran along his freshly-shaven skull and across his temple, that sweltering Wednesday evening which imprinted me in the last gasp of an extended Indian summer, tripped along his jaw joint and released, one bulbous drop after another. His vitriolic excretions splashed onto my face, blinding me for the briefest moment with their salty sting. A couple of months later, the viscosity of his cum, which I had learned so well, ...