For preservation, even an act of intimacy for the paper people had to be a dry and sterile affair. They had adapted thus: when a paper man and a paper woman came together in an act of love, he might run a paper hand along and under her paper breasts, attached like the flaps of envelopes to her paper chest. Her paper eyelids might flutter. She might run a paper hand along his paper sternum, and he might shudder. The sound of his paper skin against hers might sound like a heavy whisper, like a catch of breath in the throat to be released in a stutter and caught again. He might fold his paper arms around her paper waist, and they might bring their paper mouths together, careful not to breathe too moist. And then, locked together thus, their intimacy would be branded on their skin. Appearing down his spine, around the paper curve of his buttock, down her hip and up her inner thigh, around her navel and up again – written by invisible hands – would be the words of one of the great love stories. One couple might tell of forbidden love shared from a balcony, another of enchanted sleep ended by a lover’s kiss, and still another might have this passage burnt into their skin:
There was a time when September and June traipsed through meadows and rollicked through forests, when they were married by Titania under the moonlight and when September laid June down on a bed of clover.
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