13 Crimes Against Love, or the Crow’s Confession

A story of mine that appeared first at Lodestar Quarterly, now defunct, is now up over at Fictionaut: 13 Crimes Against Love, or, the Crow’s Confession.

He had a name everyone had. He was my friend’s boyfriend and in the dark on my bed as I held him he was like a poem about a beautiful naked boy in the dark. Very pale, easy to see. All the light in the room ran to be on him. There wasn’t much, as it is very dark inside the crow’s wing.

He’d needed a place to stay the night as he lived out of town, and I don’t remember why he couldn’t stay with my friend, but he couldn’t. Something about roommates.

We shouldn’t do this, he said, inside our kiss.

You’re right, I said, against his mouth, and turned it into the kiss again. We went on with it. He was afraid and so was I, but somehow we felt it was brave to do something wrong. Outside, the screech of the night wind on the glass that I know now to be the Fates, yelling at all the work we were making for them. Asking us for a rest.

The story is about confusing emotional violence—and the addiction to a false sense of power that comes with the seduction of married men—for love and sex.

Also, I just really like crows. The above photo is graffiti from Argentina.

Later this fall, I’ll put a few more out of print stories up over there as well as over on my author site.