pinnochio

This story was told to me by a boy who ran away from the neighbors who lived behind my house. He told me that he wasn't really a boy, that he was a trained bear, kept in a cage, poked with sticks until he roared in amusing pain for their guests. He slept on my couch for a week, as I kept my blinds pulled and thought long and hard. Then I sent him on to a friend of mine who runs a halfway house off his farm in New Hampshire, he will find him a school and a part-time job and try to make him human.

Before I sent my bear/boy away I told him to say that his name was Jim and not Jimbo, and to be careful who he tells his story to lest he wind up in another kind of cage.

You squat beside me, leaning over me. Your face is changing.

I squint, trying to make you stop shifting. I blink, trying to fix you in place. I do not have my glasses on, and I cannot tell if you are a boy or a girl. I cannot tell if you are wooden or flesh. I cannot tell if you are real.

Your expression is intent. Your fingertips are cool on my body, raising shivers. The friction of your fingers on my body raises heat. I twist, writhe beneath the rare touch you inflict, I do not even know if I am trying to move into your hands or away. I am held fixed in place, I cannot get away. My whole body is going liquid under your hands and I cannot move at all. Your hands are so sure, your expression not get away. Your hands are so sure, your expression is so determined. But somehow I do not feel that you are looking at me at all.

You are touching me more firmly now, yet I am feeling less. You press into my body, my skin grows distant beneath your touch. I lie here looking up at you, politely, waiting for you to finish. My body turns to wood.

Who are you to desire me, why do you touch this wooden body? From a distance I watch fingers on wood, tracing patterns, watch hands fucking a wooden doll. And the wood cannot move to get away.

Does the wooden doll want to escape? Button eyes stare past shifting lover, nose lengthening from lying. Growing long for unadmitted desire, growing longer for hidden fear, long enough for fucking. For fucking without contact, touch wood. i don't want

to be wooden.

I dreamed a boy telling me a story. In the dream was a wooden boy, was a girl gone broken, gone wooden, was a girl touching girl, was a boy who was a tortured bear. In the dream was the need to tell a story.

Split vision slashes me.

Where am i, wooden boy, girl exploring stiff girl, or the one fleeing her flesh into wood? Shifting patterns in the swirl, brown faces touched with red, squint and change,

where in the dream was i?

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