Free Spider on My Tongue by T.M. Wright

liberated.
    And it's an old cemetery, too. It dates to the late 18 th century. Very old. And I see nothing about these departed to suggest they come from that time.
    But that's neither here nor there, either.
    Because most of these departed seem to be naked.
    I have a theory: it just came to me (I'm very quick that way). It says this—these departed people appear naked, some of them, because, after a time, they begin to shed a lot of the artifice they carried with them from life, like the artifice that is clothing. They cling to it for a while (the artifice of clothing) because it represents an existence with which they had grown very familiar, so it's an existence they don't want to leave. But, before long (longer long in some, shorter long in others), they shed this artifice, find their nakedness more real, more honest, more comforting. But, after a while (I know this), they shed that, as well (How can souls be covered by naked skin?). And then they—the departed—are completely shed of artifice—old and new artifice (old; the skin—new; nakedness). And they exist as whispers. After a while, though, that whispering becomes inaudible, even to them, and they, the departed, depart, presumably forever.
    Neat theory, huh? I think so.
    Here's the thing: I believe that I'm naked as I sit at my kitchen table and type this rambling, sometimes incoherent, always unreliable narrative.
    Here's the relevant thing, however: I feel cold. I even believe, as I type, that I'm shivering.
    Hunger high into the bones.
    It feels like song.
    ~ * ~
10
     
    Fixed my nakedness (which was a surprise—that nakedness: "Am I really naked?" I said to myself, and looked down at my little round belly and my other parts, which seemed to be retreating into my lower belly, and I decided I was indeed naked) and left my little house again, intent on that country store and foodstuffs. I remember what I liked: I liked chili very much, though not the spicy kind, and I always ate it with macaroni salad because the two tastes and textures complemented one another. And I loved cider, too, though it didn't complement the various tastes of chili. And I loved whole wheat bread, and lemon-poppy-seed muffins—so good on the tongue, with a great aftertaste.
    I wonder if life has an aftertaste.
    I wish there were someone I could ask.
    And, if so, if life does have an aftertaste, I wonder how long it lasts.
    A chef wrote once, "There is no taste, only aftertaste."
    I'm curious as to what these departed people would say about this. I wish they would speak directly to me. I feel, at last, that I have become one of them, or that I am, at least, in their universe, and approaching their particular planet. But maybe that feeling applies to everyone—not just to me, but to you, too, and infants and young teenagers and people very, very much alive climbing mountains or rolling around on a bedroom floor while locked in an orgasmic embrace.
    I remember orgasmic embraces.
    Phyllis had orgasms wherever we went.
    At an opera once (Puccini, La Boheme) she had an orgasm. It wasn't loud (she cared about her privacy sometimes), but it was loud enough that the people seated nearby looked over, dismayed (most of them) and elevated (some of them), because Phyllis's orgasms were things of elegance and beauty and a touch of pain (because, she told me later, she knew that they, the orgasms, were going to be far behind her before long).
    She had orgasms spontaneously. We rode in taxis a lot and she had very loud orgasms in them. She screamed the names of her past lovers, my name, the names of rivers, and the names of people in history ("Sir Isaac Newton, Sir Isaac Newton!" she screamed once), as if she were searching, in her orgasm, through the soul and history of the world.
    I could not match her orgasms. Mine were simply grunts and wheezes and moans followed by silence, followed by exhaustion. But she didn't care. She always said, afterward, "Oh Abner, you're lovely!"
    She made me feel