into a wine bottle, all but drained. different from our other bottled vices, this one has no sugared crust. lacks the sentience in the syrups by the coffee machine sealing themselves up. i curl my fingers over this sterility but when your hand lands next to mine i flinch. it ungrounds me, just for a minute. (do you remember when the apartment was new and the shag rug was a forest? do you remember getting lost in the blueness? do you remember the stalks that would break off with our movement, imprinting and clinging to my sweaty thighs for days? do you remember?) i stick my hand on top of yours, crush us both to glass so we know how the fruit flies feel. we go over the edge together, slide down the walls like yellow yolks, like flushed cheeks, like the heavy lung-lost breaths that follow. we’re in it now, the curve of the glass belling into a turtleshell island in an infant sea of sauvignon blanc. we wash each other by reaching out. scrub up to our ears, hear the wine rush in and out of our bodies, hear the wine saying grace. pour over ourselves until we are standing again, ankle-deep in spirits and reaching for worship. (i don’t remember if we drank this wine before dunking ourselves in. you say of course we didn’t. you have lied to me so many times before, remember? and i am still holding your hand, those fruit flies gasping hot between our palms.)