How Will You / Have You Prepared For Your Death?

Moab. A white South African man and a brown-skinned Englishwoman
walk up a ridge towards the Delicate Arch. No. They aren’t walking towards
anything. When they see the surreal orange loop, they are both shocked.
Having come to this place without guidebooks. Map: there is a sudden
precipice, then a coiled valley of reddish
stone. He walks on ahead. Later
he tells her he rubbed and tugged at his penis as hard as he could: spurting:
arc after arc: of semen, over the edge. Later, in front of the motel mirror,
as she is pulling on her trousers: let your fear adore you. It wants to get you
off. She still doesn’t know what he means. She is drinking milky tea in the
Café Vertigo in Green Park, and she is thinking that her body is not in one
straight line. He is still fast asleep on a mattress next to the kerosene heater,
and it is winter, and she will never tell him these things. She will never tell
him about her body; she will simply kneel, continue to kneel, next to the
low bed, a bowl of foamy coffee between her cupped hands, as if she is
asking for something, and she is: waiting for him to wake up. Waking, he
reaches for her. Her knees are raw. She closes her eyes. It is her habit. He
flicks his tongue over her lips. The yoghurt-smell of his sleep-breath. She
kisses him with a kiss she learned from books. Sticky. Sometimes, for days,
weeks even, she forgets that she is going to die.