"Babe, tonight I just… want to lie here with you."
He said it suddenly.
I nodded, but my sockless feet slipped over the edge of the bed, grazing empty air.
The beer glass I’d taken from the fridge was colder than my fingertips.
While that chill climbed the back of my hand to my elbow, I was already sweating.
Last night this man had licked the hollow of my throat and whispered, I could devour you right now.
Today the same lips felt different—soft, but a softness without horizon.
When desire is at its roughest, why do we sharpen our bodies into such keen withdrawal?
1. The Black Mattress in a Travel Rental
It was spring—or autumn; memory keeps color better than seasons.
Only the black mattress in a room of deep violet remains vivid.
That day he lowered his head to kiss me.
Just before his damp mouth touched mine, I stopped breathing.
Parsley and orange-peel drifted together in the air, and the thought flashed: Will I have to remember this scent forever?
His skin burned under my fingertips, yet I turned colder.
My body already knew how quickly heat can harden.
The mattress was soft, but its softness felt about to become a boundless bog.
Each time I flexed my toes the black fabric tickled the bridge of my foot—terrifying.
One step deeper and I might never find the way back.
2. Min-jae, and the Metallic Taste of Midwinter
Last winter Min-jae glowed faintly beyond the glass like a neon sign.
Our first kiss was neither cold nor hot; only a chilled metallic tang lingered on the tip of my tongue.
When it ended he said,
"I don’t think we’re right for each other."
The sentence was as short as a blade.
I stood by the bed for thirty minutes, feeling the cold seep through the soles of my feet.
If only I could keep this chill forever.
That was when I understood: the moment desire touches skin, certainty of its end arrives first.
3. Soo-jin, and the Hiss of a Closing Elevator
For two months Soo-jin heard only the breathing of an unknown man.
He stayed behind a blind, borrowing her breath over the phone.
The day they met, as the hotel elevator climbed to the seventh floor, she trembled at the small click of the key sliding in.
When the doors opened she stepped back, smiling.
"I only loved his voice.
His real body… made me anxious."
She pulled her subway card from her wallet.
The white silicone case was stained like bacteria, the color of her fear.
If only I could keep the voice and forget the rest.
4. Psychology Calls This Fear Intimacy Phobia
The sentence he lobbed into empty space—"I like you"—by the time it reaches my ear has already modulated into "What about you?"
That pressure is the roller of emotion.
Ordinary love is not a question of to give or not, but a windpipe caught between wanting to receive and terror of loss.
So we perch on the edge of the bed, gauging each other’s eyes.
Not yet.
5. A Fifteen-Centimeter Gap, the Temperature of Fear
That night we lay side by side.
Blue light from our phones washed our faces.
Only our toes brushed, yet because it was only that, I felt alive.
Fifteen centimeters between us: the exact temperature of fear.
Cold that feels hot, hot that feels cold.
Perhaps I want to keep this tremor forever.
I left my feet dangling off the bed, curling and uncurling my toes in silence.
I measured the fifteen centimeters that neither reached him nor let me drift away.
If the trembling vanished, everything might end.
So I resolved not to move to the center of the mattress yet—just grazing it with my toes, keeping my fear close.