Ink bloodies my hand. The pen’s tongue laps feverishly at a napkin, a wistful spritz of tears. It’s captivating how the flick of a wrist, the arch of a tendon, sends the river dripping down another line, another curve. Here, it coughs out a splutter of light on an iris. There, a kiss of shadow by the nape of the neck. In the frenzy of bony knuckles, we create life, my pen and I.

     I trace the dust of ink, pricks of essence chained to paper. It quivers in hand, the captor, urging me to darken the brow here, a soft fleck at the collarbone. Amazing, the gentle curve of a line, molding the delicate strain of bone, the supple touch of flesh. Something raw and sensuous in the sweep of hair, left wild and untamed. The eyes, oh, the eyes. That longing in the small swell of ink, the bittersweet contour of a soul damned to recreation from the calloused hand of a broken woman.

     I watch her come to life, tissue by tissue, muscle by muscle. Her slender nails wrap in a river of curls, flowing through outstretched fingers as if she could never hope to hold it all. Hands that hesitate to hold a phone that will not ring tonight. Afraid to hold a mirror, a lipstick case of the color he likes, an enormous truth the bed sheets rarely murmur. Oh yes, there is far too much to hold. But, ah, how I hold her under the palm of my hand. And she is mine, all mine. My desperate creature imprisoned to a diner napkin.

     Revolting, isn’t it? To look into the curve of her parted lips and stare straight into the mouth of my own desire. To see an upward twitch of beauty and horror in the tips of her lashes, and find nothing more than the hollow projections of one woman’s lonely soul. The gentle arch of her shoulders are the burden of my own slumped spine. The balance of her ankles hold the ache of my own heels, pricked with maps they yearn to travel though my tongue has never learned their name. And somehow, somehow I am certain, if I broke open her chest, the heart caged between her ribs would be balanced delicately between nothing and nowhere. The labyrinth of my own.

     Vaguely, the shape of sounds brush against my thoughts. Words I’m certain have meaning, though I don’t speak this language anymore. A bit dazed, I look up into the simmering eyes of a waitress who must have been speaking for some time now.

    I still the twitch of the pen. “I’m sorry, what was that?”

    Her jaw tightens, a beautiful bulge of sinew I itch to capture. “Do you need something, hun?”

    Confused, I stumble out a phrase equating to something like, “Just a cup for water.”

     It’s strange, this language. She wants to ask why I’m the only one sitting alone in McDonald’s at 11:30 on a Friday night, why I haven’t ordered anything, if I’m contemplating pulling out a gun and exchanging all the cash in the drawer for ten years in prison, if her life is worth minimum wage. But instead, she asks a question she doesn’t care to know the answer. Yes, I need a ride home. I need a place to sleep tonight. I need money for dinner. I need to be certain I still have a purpose after waiting two hours for a man I know will not show.

     But she has no interest in the truth. Instead, she circles my table, wiping nonexistent crumbs off neighboring booths. Meaningless actions. Like the arch of my wrist from tabletop to broken lips, or the constant flick of my eyes to a silent phone. I tenderly look into the eyes of my lovely girl, and in a bitter smile find her nothing more than scribbles on a napkin. With a gentle hand of mercy, I crumple her loneliness in a neat chaos, flicking the ball to the empty seat across from me. No remnants of life lay in the used napkins dusting the floor.