But except for my sad junkies, whose race towards the arms of death I only quickened, I cannot bring myself to kill somebody. Not yet, anyway, in spite of my painful devotion to her. I watch bodies, the long legs of whores, the silicone-brimming tits of some of them and the flaccid breasts of others, their carefully manicured nails that reflect the color of blood under the neon lamps or in the brief brightness of passing cars' headlights; I watch all this and wonder, while they talk to one another and laugh tired laughs, sometimes. My eyelids feel so heavy and, without fully realizing it, I fall asleep with my back to the cemetery's wall, and dream of Sofia, of metal prosthesis replaced by a cadaver's limbs, of blades I don't have the guts to seize, of fragments of lives I cannot convince myself to take. Trash scattered on the pavement, and the sky's greasy with dusk and smog as I cover the asphalted length of my street, with its faded graffiti and its gloomy houses and its closed shops smiling with the metal teeth of shutters. It's not a long walk to Sofia's house, but the rooms she usually stays in – sowing herself with other seeds of change, drinking wine or whisky that seeps through the leaks and cracks of her body and puddles around her feet, inserting dead birds' fragile bones under her skin – tonight those rooms are empty and it takes me a few minutes to find her. In the attic, a claustrophobic wasteland of mold and forgotten things under a low ceiling. Broken furniture and grayed acrylic sheets painted with Che Guevara's face, cardboard boxes full of dirty clothes and damp piles of anarchic leaflets; large, stained mirrors which probably were hung on the ceilings when this place was a whorehouse, decades ago, and stuffed sofas covered with red velvet and stinking of cat's piss; and there, near the attics' only window, Sofia, knelt beside a large heap of rags... "What are you doing here?" I hear myself asking, my eyes moving from the rags to Sofia. Her face's caked with dried mud and decorated with thick stitches and shreds of fish skin; it makes me think of a sea divinity's mortuary mask. Sofia, from every direction possible: I think he came here to die. She gets to her feet with a brief jingle of Indian anklets, the mirrored lenses of her eyes returning to the attic a sticky reflection of its murk. A soft creak from the intricacy of her junctures as she lights a cigarette stepping aside to let me examine what she's found. Then: take a look. This form has once been a man, but living his life on the streets has turned him into something different, a creature of dirt and crusts, pores filled with smog and skin the colour of asphalt. And Sofia's probably right – he came here to die his lonely death nobody'll give a fuck about, perhaps because nobody gives a fuck about this place. His carrion, with its putrid oozes and its smells of pollution, may be a fertile ground to harvest, but the sadness of his huddled posture and the sorrowful look still impressed in his rough features make me feel somewhat uneasy. Anyway, the inevitable question: "Do you want me to cut him?", my voice barely audible. But Sofia shakes her head, black hair partly concealing the lenses of her eyes: not really. Leave him here. She starts to leave, escorted by the sound of her anklets and prosthesis, but then seems to change her mind and comes close to me: here, give me your hand... Her metal fingers close gently around my wrist, guiding me through a moist crack in her belly, until my fingertips find a rib's sharp edge, one of her strange bags hanged to the bone. I take it out slowly, carefully, and Sofia doesn't have to tell me what to do. I kneel beside the dead man and put the bag in his right hand, our bizarre gift of tissue and secrets and secretions for a lonely body. When I turn around, she's already at the door. Some nights ago, in one of the upper rooms whose ceiling has fallen, after a summer rain she let me strip her of all of her clothes and contemplate the maze of her body under the moon's opaque shadow (offering to my kisses the jagged aluminium spikes that emerge from her side, guiding my hands and eyes under loose flaps of skin, accepting the water of my spit on the flowers of her sores); I bared her thighs and examined with lips and fingers her bones laced with metal and leather, licked the dirty plastic squares sewn over decayed flesh and naked nerves, inhaled deeply her scent of incense and rotting meat, urine and sandalwood and sweat; the copper spirals that keep her cunt perpetually open scraped my tongue, seemed to suck blood from my mouth. To the slow music of dampness seeping through consumpted walls, I sat on the wet marble floor and Sofia impaled herself on me, her intricate labia swallowing my cock and balls like an impossible mouth (her soft womb's sutures and scars feeling like lace against my flesh; imagining for a moment our heat impressing those marks on the surface of my sex, stating once again that my eyes belong to the remains of her skin); with my teeth and trembling hands I helped her take off her gloves and her chromed metal prosthesis clawed sweetly at my chest and sides as I drank inebriating secretions from a cut in her neck. Later, in the overgrown backyard of the house, I heard her cry, but I was too drunk to ask her why and too tired to try to soothe her. A painful morning filtering through my flat's shutters, and I have no idea of how or why did I come back here last night. No comfort in the pillow's smells, only salt stains from my nightly sweats. But as I get up from the bed, I see something in the tangle of sheets: one of Sofia's bags. Taking it in my hands, I lay down again, and through the dirty tissue I taste something sweet and corrupted. I press it to my face, taking in deep breaths and trying to guess the nature of its contents, wondering if it's jewels and dead insects, shards of chalk and fallen teeth, meat crawling with larvae and decomposing flowers, one of her contrasting associations, or if it's things I cannot yet imagine. I don't open it, I huddle on one side imagining myself like a distant mirror of the dead homeless in our attic, tired and sick of loneliness and ready to welcome death; the whisky's warm and tastes like shit, but the pills and the joint help me not to think about it. Later, in the house, I ask Sofia to dance for me with her dark, hypnotic gown and she says yes. I've brought her candles stolen from a church and some empty plastic bottles, but we've left them in the hall absently, as if we both had other things on our minds. The blanket of her sanctuary of dead things has gained a lung and some rotten teeth, and it is there that she begins her dance, in the uncertain light of candles and the sickly sweet smell of her relics. My head's elsewhere, though (the razor waiting languidly like a sleeping animal, anticipating the sound of severed nerves and of sliced cartilage, soaking with the room's rich smells and with my thoughts), and the mesmerizing effect of the movements of her hips and legs is somehow diluted; but I don't care. While Sofia's still dancing, I ask her: "Would you undress for me again?" She doesn't even answer, but her clothes slowly fall to the floor, one by one, a visual punctuation for an entirely new kind of dance, her body glorious in decay. When she comes to me, I take the blade from my pocket; a smile of understanding creeping on her face, shaping her lips turgid of pus under the dark red lipstick, and she kneels in front of me. The first cut is mine, a thin red line along my left arm, then I hand her the razor: "Take what you want", I say, and I don't really know if I'm smiling as well or not. Sofia's metal hands are expert and quick, and while she works on me with the blade, I suck the precious fluids of rot and change exuding from her, savoring the increasingly remote shadows of pain in my body and trying to imagine what I'll become. (© Matteo Curtoni 2008) ink.html

my eyes belong to the

remains of HER SKIN