Tours of the Black Clock

114

FOR MONTHS, REVENGE COMMENSURATE and fitting eluded me. I lay thwarted in the dark. Then last night it came to me, on my bed. I woke to it with clarity; for a moment I couldn’t believe it. I mustered my strength to raise myself and get to the desk. It took thirty seconds to do it; I didn’t precede it with an act of pleasure. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of pleasure even if his eighty-year-old body was capable of knowing it. I’d never given him the pleasure of her before, after all, other than his witness from the corner of our room on Dog Storm Street. Because I’m the god’s god, no act of pleasure is necessary: I can touch the egg of her without a penis or its pollen. I can touch the egg of her with my pen, with a sentence: Life is committed at the core of her, I write, nine months short of creation.