I've learnt that tenderness is false and all beds are made from minefields. It's stolen and remembered wrong, like everything about this job. It comes behind, from start to finish, the back to front, the Kinski twist and spin. You start off at the Armoury and everyone else can't cross their legs. The corridors are filled with fingers and it's $250 per scream. Mouths are clamped open and silenced with a thumb. Metalwork and muesli gets stuck in teeth that can no longer chew. The tongue will not glisten, it bubbles underneath the fur, it surfaces and breathes.

Foundation can cover hand prints and shadows can be disguised, but not the fear of razor burn. Put them in wardrobe, staring at the plate of sandwiches. What about the wait for primp and preen? No, just spray and fingerscross the coating doesn't smear. Even onions became stereotypes, used as silhouettes, as measurements of what was once dubbed Rubenesque. Who would ever hold their heart and watch it jettison and peel? No, not I, said buttermilk. Not I, said acned can. We're all inside her still, with little chance of overtime. The hours are cantilevers, they help to rupture cysts. When squeezed through pores and sieved, they trickle down on church spires and cover the world in creams. The yellow glow of ulcers, picked apart with cocktail sticks, the cabinets and mirrors, the circles traced by fingers -- all these pool, they never cease.

Ask for ages first, because the rainfall won't show up at night, because it drizzles inside them first. This saves on belly buttons, the perfect crevice for regret to gather. Her skin is flaked around the bowl. I cannot expel the past, it will not descend, the painkillers have my insides. For example, if one could squeeze up to time with a milky handshake, I'd make my way across, disguised as night and offering a swap. Upstairs to a porcelain daughter, speckled with gravity and twenty years ago. I could be overwhelmed, struggling with erections, be club-footed, wet and beautiful. 

The gifts we got removed all touch and feeling, all sense of right from wrong. Skills and surgery are more than memory, they curl a finger round once more and remind us all how ducts and pipes were once our playgrounds. We used to sing in symmetry, our crimes were joyful, improvised.