2 March 2002 | Vol. 2, No. 1

Acorns

by DANTE WOO

This hammock is strung for one, and it's so humid outside that we stink. If I concentrate, maybe I can weigh us down, till the netting is barely grazing the acorns below us. When we touch the ground I will orgasm. I'm preparing for it now, facing down while you sleep turned towards the sky, my breath moving your collar. I can smell the fabric softener you used on it. (Popo, Chinese for 'grandmother,' hangs her laundry outside to dry, or is it tan?, except there are macadamia nuts, not acorns, on the ground.) I try a small groan, just as practice. Pressing against a hammock and seeing if it will give makes me wonder if it hurts cheese when you grate it.

I wonder instead if I should think of nothing, turning into dead weight that I hear adds a good five pounds to one's natural body weight. Something blows by and it's—Why would just wind be scary?—but it makes me think of how I'm too 21 to not be thinking ever. I give up and watch us rise a few inches higher off Earth. I study you in my head now, and how you don't seem to get sleep erections like I do; I get them even when I'm awake, but when it's your body itself and not some visual stimulus that causes them, they seem particularly inspiring, an appropriate time to give thanks to and for your body, kneeling and everything.

You snarl because you know that I'm awake and looking. I shut my eyes, unzip silently, and water the roots of a nearby tree, trying to notice whether the loss lifts us further off the ground.