Phantasm

That\'s her. Walking from the brick building, the one with the long hair. She\'s been mine a hundred times, late in the night. We dissolve beneath the sheets, in a room so dark that we could be anybody; she orbits closer and her eyes materialize, blue as the south-side of the moon.



She, of course, knows nothing of this. Knows nothing of the hours in which my ceiling becomes her skin, white as winter cool as glass. The soft inside of my thigh is her breast beneath my palm, the rugged breaths that fill the air belong to us both.



And she will drop her head when she gets there, hair tumbling out like a veil onto my stomach. Oil spill, feathery to touch and jasmine to inhale. She is the magic I thought I forfeited, the thoughts I believed could never be diverged.



The truth is, I love only him. The one who wakes with an arm over my chest, whose breath is like sighing clouds. He is the only one I am permitted to know so well, the skin and sinew and muscles that my hands can so easily glide. And when we\'re together, he and I, I can only think of him. His knees sinking into the mattress, his fists twisting up the sheets, his begging breaths.



She comes to me only in whispers, like morning lust impossible to resist. I\'ve heard it called many things. Lolicon. Schoolgirl obsession. Inner child hitting puberty. Sister complex.



Maybe that\'s true, I don\'t know. Waiting for my sister, I\'ve seen many girls exit that high school building. They swarm around her like flies. She\'s among the heartbreakers, I know that; her crowd moves in slow-motion for all the boys, each step arching toe-to-heel, hair swishing like something from a dream.



They\'re all gray and white and beige through the metal fence. Skirts and breasts and legs.



It\'s only as a big brother that I understand these girls are more than the obvious. I\'d kill that boyfriend of hers if I caught him with the thoughts I\'ve had, directing them at my kid sister. They\'re wrong, I tell myself-they\'re all kids. A beige knee peeking from the hem of a skirt could drive you crazy, but they\'re kids.



So when she\'s here, giggling with my sister, I think nothing. I feel nothing, see nothing but their faces.



It\'s when she\'s gone that I truly scare myself. I can\'t stop her, she slides into my mind like autumn breezes. She pulls back the shower-curtain and shows me how she\'s grown. She steps forward. Her hair brushes my arm.



And I stumble back against the tiles, clutching the curtain rod. I don\'t fight her anymore. I\'ll succumb, my hands becoming hers, my fist her body. I don\'t love you, I\'ll gasp. She\'ll just be indifferent, never smiling. I think she\'s so sullen because her smile reminds me of my mother.



But I blink in the final moment, thinking that maybe I could change my mind, maybe I could love her and take her around the world. When I open my eyes, she\'s gone and I\'m defeated.



How quickly would I be disowned if they knew the real reason I pace so quickly past the living room, my head down, my tongue tied. Sometimes it\'s those simple things, her wrist against her chin and her neck curled like a drawbridge. Her skin is so white and so smooth that I imagine it melting between my fingertips. I tease the idea of her thigh\'s warmth in my hand.



They were studying, it was quiet. Quiet enough to think. I was making noise in the kitchen, running the water, taking extra time with the dishes. I went to bed before he came home that night. And when the mattress sunk beside me, when he whispered my name and slid his fingers over my hip, I pretended to be asleep.



I couldn\'t have him; not with her scent lingering in the apex of my fingers.



That\'s her in the morning, the one with the long hair and the blue eyes. She\'s gray cotton in the doorway, holding her books to her chest. My sister\'s thundering towards her down the stairs, but before she\'s there, our eyes meet.



She smiles at me, and I\'ve never been more sure: I don\'t love her. Not even in the middle of the night, when my hands become hers, and I make love to a shadow.