The Welder's Body

One of the strangest pleasures I have ever had is being crushed by a limb. Not crushed, exactly, more like weighted.

A man who sleeps as soon as he closes his eyes, the way I imagine a child might, he has limbs that weigh more than I would have ever known looking at them. A leg is made of lead; an arm is a similar kind of metal.

I had not felt that pressure from his limbs in a long enough time that I smiled and did not push his heavy leg off mine as I listened to him breathe and waited in the night for sleep. I smile again now remembering this—he is kind, and his body is possibly heavy with this. Heavy with the mass of his sense of responsibility to the world, dropped in closed-eyed abandon on me.