When you were born, I held you in my hands.
When you died, my hands brushed you face and raised the sheet that served as your shroud in that oddly quiet and sterile room.
I always had such a way with living things: people, pets, plants, words.
Everything I touch now seems to dry up and wither away, since you have gone.
Yet somehow, I have not succumbed to failure to thrive.
Why?
The candles are lit.
The treats are passed out. Footsteps fallen away, like the leaves skittering past the door.
Leaving out the silent meal, we wish well upon those who lost to our touch but not forgotten.
Here in the darkness take my robes and leave me bare, as the trees that line our streets.
Closing my eyes, leaning against you chest, I imagine that you are rising higher than I can see, majestic in the night.
Let all that has hurt us fall away.
The pain dissipates.
Taste the pomegranate from lips and feel the grasp of eternity.
I step out of youth into sunset; you are the sacrifice that feeds us both.
Time out of mind, over and over, the circle unfolding.
When you have been denied, you cannot rest.
Your dreams do not offer succor, only a harsh reminder of unmet need.
Waking from them into the grimness of the pre-dawn.
Mouth empty.
Heart empty.
Folding around the rumpled pillow, sigh of despair creeping out of your nostrils.
Falling back into troubled sleep.
Burdened with waiting during the day. After day.
Yet one night, you turn, tangled in your sheets.
To find her, see her.
There.
Half in the darkness, half-illuminated by the street lamps shining through your window.
Unbuttoning her blouse.
Beckoning your lips to clamp around her dropping swollen nipple.
Arms wrapped around her, cradled against her, you suckle and drink.
Your cock: harder than you think it could be.
Her sweet milk, filling your mouth, warming your throat.
Eagerly, you go from breast to breast. Afraid to stop, afraid she will be gone with the dawn.
Even you can be filled, can be satiated.
To slide into a deep and dreamless sleep.
Finally.
