Party

"We're engaged", she said. The moonlight reflected off the diamonds on her finger, as her hands formed circles down your back.

The champagne dribbled down the back of your dress like urine. I could taste the beef on your lips, mingled with drops of wine, redder than the blood you shed on sheets that were whiter than the marble statues we ogled in the dark.

"You always write about sex", you said, and I was afraid you would tell me that this is not where your hand touched my thigh, that this is not the angle where your lips met mine, and I smelled of cinnamon, the spice you could not stand: Your were always picking at your salad when I put cinnamon in the dressing. In the end, I could tell the number of our days by the way you chewed your lettuce. "Too dry", you said, but by then I had learned not to cry.

"Why are you fasting?" you asked. You were wearing a white sheath, but your hair was darker than onyx, dark like the shadows that dogged our bodies in the moonlight, and through a haze of champagne, I saw her fingers entwined in yours. "I have to pee", I said. You laughed. "That's not an answer." I was silent. "You've been drinking too much", you said. "What do you care? You have her now."

I tried to walk away, but after all the nights of dreaming of my dramatic exit, I stumbled. You did not laugh, and that meant you pitied me.

I had worn armor, in the form of silken blouses and skirts that moved with more whispers than a peacock's eyes, and perfumes whose value could feed ten homeless men dinner, but no cloth could withstand the bullets of being at the engagement party of the woman you once loved, and being forced to smile.