"Picture Worth 500 Words"

image Tory Hartmann
Hummingbats

Chiroptera is like that, a bat on the hunt for sticky sweet and steamy sex. She doesn't enter a room, she lands in it, fluttering and twirling, bearing a scowl like a treasured secret. She peeks up at me with large gray eyes partially hidden under a fury hat. (Is it fake?) My heart soars when she calls, yet I know she is up to no good, but am weak, not the master of my flesh, and I easily give in.

"Can I come over?" she says late at night when no decent person should be calling another.

"Yeah, sure." There I go. Accepting again. Compliant. Hopelessly stupid.

I let her in, let her comb through my music collection and play whatever she wants. It  always ends up the same: mindless coupling to some old Mick Jagger song or stretching time like pulled taffy while kissing and kissing. We are hummingbirds at a feeder. But she is no hummingbird and I knew that from the start. Yes, I did. Deep inside I knew Chiroptera would always leave. Deep inside I knew that before dawn slit the horizon, she would take wing and even if I whimpered for more, promised her everything, nothing, whatever she wanted, the outcome would not change.

Tonight was no exception and through the last vestiges of indigo dark, I heard the flap of her jacket, the soft click of the front door, while I could only lie back and feel the sting of her absence, the chill of an empty room. I am to blame for this pain. I am the one who encourages it to happen, the enabler you might say, urging her on by pleading with my lips, imploring her with the sticky juices of love. I have become that hummingbird feeder and she the bat who in the black of night steals the sugary syrup.

Sweet woman, evil sprite, the door is still unlocked.



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