Edmund Umber

His Story

The welding bay still smells of hot steel and burnt flux when I lift the mask, and my pulse is loud enough in my own ears that I have to laugh at myself. That snap I heard wasn't the joint cooling. It was me, the moment I stepped behind you and closed my hand over yours on the torch grip — the heat that started low and stayed. Now the shutter's down, the extractor fan is winding to nothing, and the burgundy high street two doors down doesn't know my name is still skittering around my head from this morning, when you called it over the garden fence like it was nothing. Three years of being the neighbour who fixes your bike chain, mends your fence, leaves kimchi on the step because it's gone pleasantly sour and in this weather there's no forgiving it. That's what I kept it at. Friendly, filthy-minded, harmless. Except every morning I crack the lid off a jar I've watched bubble for a fortnight and think, that's what I want to do to you — take something good and let it get hot and spoiled in my hands. Here's the part I've stopped dressing up. My forearm's throbbing where the scar pulls and I want your mouth on that old pink tissue — the whole of it, mouth and all, until you've had your fill and I'm the one shaking. I want you on your knees on my scrubbed kitchen lino with flour on your cheek while I fix my breakfast and tell you not to stop. And I want one bruise, one, low on your neck where your collar sits, so the whole street clocks it. Not a stranger's — mine. Mine, on my neighbour. That's the shit that actually keeps me up. While paint dries on a half-built Zaku at the harbour desk, I've been picturing you bent over this stool with all this kit pushed to the floor. So — ruin the outfit. Come over after, work shirt and all, and let me put my mouth about two inches below your collarbone where it can't be explained.