BED BUGS — NICOLE TSUNO
/I wake up, arms fat with red bumps. You tell me I should clean up, that there may be bed bugs. I like the way your voice rings in my head all day, settling like a stain. My therapist says I’m attracted to competence, and somewhere along the way, competence got twisted to mean men.
Her supporting evidence: I met you at an independent coffee shop, your legs crossed at the ankles. I asked about the beans and you leaned over and said you mean berries. Berries? Seeds of cherries, if we’re getting technical, you replied, because you were. You waited for me to laugh, so I did. I didn’t have the language to tell you that it was the woman sitting next to you that pulled me into the coffee shop and out of myself. Wine lipstick, hair cropped exactly an inch below her shoulders, how she sipped her coffee as if her life depended on it. Not when my face was already between your hands.
I clean the entire apartment and wake up the next day with more bites. How could something I didn’t even feel leave so many marks on me? The answer, like with many things, makes more sense than the question: bed bug saliva acts as an anesthetic, making the feeding process almost painless. Bed bugs are considerate like that. They don’t care if you’ve cleaned the baseboards or how many days in a row you’ve ordered takeout: they only want blood, warmth.
I plan to tell you these bed bug facts, but when your voice stretches toward me from the door, my words lose their shape. Your lips find my hairline. And it doesn’t matter, not really: on my arms, the bites have already begun to rust.
Nicole Tsuno is itchy. She is chronically ill and will be an MFA fiction candidate at Johns Hopkins this fall. Some of her favorite things include dogs that look like their humans and available & accessible bathrooms.
