More Than a Mask by Chella Courington

                     Jeff Ruane CC



More Than a Mask

Most likely October 1990 I was cat lady in black fishnet hose under a black leather skirt enveloping my
ass, but ah the mask—penciled brown whiskers tracking under my mascaraed eyes and through the
hollow of my cheeks, a rhinestone nose glittering in the dark, my sniff easy to hear, pointy little ears
peeping out of my hair waiting for the real party to begin when you bared me piece by piece, careful not
to muss my face.

Aroused by your long, painterly fingers sliding into almost every crevice, rubbing deep my belly button
until I opened into a warm spring spreading my legs like a dam.

Since those days breast cancer and colitis, pancreatitis and hip replacements have changed our bodies but
not our longing to fill the holes.

Kindness shelters the love—always has, always will—thirty years later we leave our place, mouths and
​noses covered, hands obedient, and walk together into the unknown world.

​

Chella Courington is a writer and teacher whose poetry and fiction appear or are forthcoming in numerous anthologies and journals including SmokeLong Quarterly, The Collagist, and The Los Angeles Review. Her novella, Adele and Tom: The Portrait of a Marriage, is available at Breaking Rules Publishing. Courington lives in California.

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