Two silhouettes muttered through cigarette smoke next to the tall, black double doors at the head of the corridor
unfazed by the white rectangles flickering above us. The doors parted
next thing I knew, I was in
a black box of four tall black walls, and a clammy black floor
made of the same padded fabric as the entrance doors.
Riotous bass pummelled through the room like a tortured bull.
There were hundreds of people here; maybe more
but they were all lying docile, faceless and still
against each other.

They were all young. I picked up an inconsistent rhythm of chests rising and falling
like ripples ushered across the sea by a gentle breeze.
Yet it was the overwhelming sense of flesh here that
lit a snarling viciousness within me. How it excited me and how
I feared it.
I was a butcher, afraid of what he could do.

I saw someone I recognised – her brown hair was tied back, her eyelashes
twitched in her slumber. I stepped over and sat behind her. She pulled herself closer to me
and kissed my cheek. I buried my face in her neck and placed my palm on her bare stomach
took my index finger, and ran a circle around her navel.

I can’t remember what happened after that.  Images slip through like
water in cupped hands.
But I remember the raw beat, and the gentle ripple of chests
and how it reminded me of the sleeping new-borns in a maternal ward.