amphibi.us

Like everything else in the room, Peters is hard. Like everything, that is, until she took the cubicle beside his, heaved her belly two by one into his arc. As if the earth needed repopulating.

Always, the blank beige walls have been his fortress, the world an inaudible slap against cliffs far below. Now, the odor of her beats like high tide against his nostrils.

Peters flattens his palm on the bare surface of his desk, not a paper scrap of unfinished task, not a photograph.

If he’d ever thought about it, he’d say it’s his job to take the spitting mess of the world, turn it into beautiful, clean, environmentally-friendly code. Everyone he meets gets a number. His is 0.

His fingers a metronome, Peters punches the keyboard, marking black against white. The tap tap of her bitten nails against formica cracks his pacing like melody without rhythm. He wonders how she’d look changing diapers on his kitchen table.

Where he sees code, she sees color. Peters flinches at the click and slide of her mouse, brightening greens and blues ’til sea swallows his foundations. Opening his mouth to assign her number, his last weapon, he tastes salt.

© Sari Krosinsky, 2011

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