“A Letter from Her Muse” by Alana Noel Voth

Photography by Mick Davidson

Mica is her name for me. Watch: I’m a criminal, a vagabond, and a sin eater, too. I’m like schizophrenia. A haunting. Every man she’s ever known. Her Muse. She thinks I’m the strong one, more popular and braver, too. But listen while she meditates on unsolved mysteries, hostages, the blues. When she’s ready, we start to dance. Sticky entanglement: Voice in her ear. My hungry introvert. She never writes on a full stomach. I have to string her along. Desire plus anticipation, is a rush. She wants permission to swim in the deep end, run with scissors, and sniff glue. We’re up to our necks in tension, in over our heads, hyenas back from the ambush, at loss for a resolution. Anyway, we’re in no position to judge each other. “I’ve never had a friend like that,” she says. See, that’s what I live for. Blood brothers, soul sisters, wolves who mate for life: Lucy and Mina, Levi and Himmler, Jekyll and Hyde: What she makes of me, who I am, pieces of people, places, and things—like Frankenstein’s monster, I’m dangerous because I’m benevolent, beautiful actually, when she’s through.

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Alana Noel Voth’s work has most recently appeared in Bluestem, Dream Lover, The Used Furniture Review, Best of Best Gay Erotica: volume 3, and at PANK. Her first book, Fall, is forthcoming from Tiny Hardcore Press in 2012.