Compelled

You are the target.

He cannot help but watch. Every night, he walks and walks, a tiny voice urging him that salvation lies a few more blocks ahead. Or around the bend.

Looking around corners.  Stopping at the sight of pastel blue flimsy curtains blowing on a dark night, struck dumb by the illumination spilling out, beckoning.

Do you mind that he stands, silent as the tomb you will one day molder in, watching?

Or gazing, if you prefer that word. For his eyes caress your exposed skin ike hands. His eyes are like mouths feeding on your exposed breasts, nipples hardening at the joy of being free.

His breath, caught, as you rub your nipples, easing their tension. Yet you feel your areola’s pucker and then send a text to your clit, which cc’s your juices to flow and your hand to hastily reach for the shiny silver vibe in the drawer to your right.

He watches. He is riveted.

Are you pleased that he sees you lean against the wall,  brace your thighs and pull your panties to the side? He sees you there, lost in need, as your concentrate with all your might to coax your clit to knock your breathless.

Just for a few minutes, just for a bit…

In his mind, there is nothing but you and as you come- shuddering -he does, too.

Leaning his forehead against the tree, until his legs stop shaking.

So are you.

You walk away to clean up.

So does he.

You couldn’t control yourself.

Neither could he.

Falling away

Once, my heart thrilled to see you.

Now, it is sluggish, no matter what you do.

I hoped you saw my dismissal flow across my still face.

Blinded by memory, not the present, you persisted.

Until you could not find me, only traces of my absence.

Like the paper left over after the candy is consumed, the wrapper of you is discarded.

Tossed away.

Left to bounce along the concrete, to wheresoever the winds take you.

Surely

The stars are fading in the sky, when you awaken and reach for me.

As right as rain, I am not there. Was I ever?

You call for me. Not that it is really me you seek.

*

You fooled yourself into thinking I could solve the naked equations, square your bare rule, converge your series.

With the honesty you don’t possess, I will admit that anyone with XX chromosomes could. If she looks right, XXY would suffice or a deliciously deceptive TS, who smells like sugar and feels like silk.

Prowling about your room-shirtless-the thin cotton of your boxers barely containing your pulsing erection. The thin dew of night sweat still covering the fine hairs lining your spine.

Stand still in the quiet morning sun and admit that I/she/me/her/it/they/anyone can fulfill your need.

Whisper it to yourself. Then say it aloud.

Again. Again.

Until it manifests right before you.

Watch your world transform.

*

I never yours to have. I left you with a phantom.

Do you recall running your fingers through her, as I found meaning elsewhere?

For you never wanted me.

You just wanted.

And you hate me for knowing.

Sweet

I recall you taste of cherries, burnished by the sun, steeped in honey and lemon.

Open your mouth. Let me taste you again.

Your tongue-a smooth hard tangerine drop for me to suck.

Let me dig my fingers into the hard bones of your hips, to release the nectar hidden within you.

Press your sugar-coated hands to my breasts and knead my softness, until the heat coming from me turns them sticky.

Put your thumbs to my lips, let me lick them clean.

Let me kneel before you.

Wrap your sticky fingers in my hair, as I use my mouth to  make your eyes roll shut.

I see the veins etched in your neck, as you tumble down the waterfall of caramel dreams.

Warm hot butterscotch down my throat, coating the heart of me.

Isolation

A click.  A buzz. The light-cool and grey blue, fills the room.

Angling, positioning, adjusting the light.

And you wait.

Until someone bites.

This time, it was subtle, not so explicit. You lured her gently, teased her until she clicked on the button and… watched you.

That is what you want. To be seen.

Last night, you were frustrated, anxious to connect.

You needed an audience, recognition.

No fun for you to do it alone. You need the rush, the thrill.

Junkie. Fiend. Addicted to an mental place.

Unseen by you, yet you are seen by them. Real in real time, in a way that you are not face-to-face.

Relaxed, easy. Taunt, throbbing. Panting, erupting.

Night after night, looking for a woman to look at you.

Further you retreat in your shell by day, only emerging when you are alone and wired.

More and more, you need. Need and need.

You looked at a woman as you walked by this morning, wondering if she will log on later and watch you. Your lips were frozen shut when she turned and smiles at you. She is too close, you must have distance. To function.

At times, you open up your cam, and idly stroke your cock, half-hard. Partially aroused, able to spring to life at a moment’s notice.

For someone, anyone.

You vaguely remember the feel of flesh, of bone, of skin other than your own.

Awash in a controlled climate, the reality is fading.

Life is slipping over you. See it?

No.

For how can the blind lead the blind?

By touch.

Not in your case.

Curatus

Some go to the gym, the temple where they pray with their sweat and give hot bursts of breath as offerings.

Others go to the docs, slinking onto the soft sofas where anxieties are waved and aired out. Soft clouds of grief and despair float from their lips.

Not you.

You go to her. Drop to your knees.

Waiting, trembling for her to diagnose and solve your ailments.

The smell wafts from her leather boots the sweetest aromatherapy.

Your mind hurts. She slaps your face, grips your jaw and ejects saliva in your eager mouth.

As her spit trickles, as the burn in your cheeks subsides, your thoughts calm.

Your heart hurts. The pinch of the clamps cuts right through your breastbone, warming your chest.

Weights are hung off the ends. Your eyes roll back and your back arches, then relaxes, vertebra licking like coins.

Your soul hurts; is twisted in knots. The gag tightens around the back of your head,  as she pushes you face down.

Like a beast pulling a plow, you are mounted. Whipped. Plugged.

At that moment, you heard a sharp snap.

You are aligned. Whole.

They have their therapy; you have yours.

Indicted

What do we have between us? You are so rough and you rip me, like sandpaper across silk. I am unraveling and tattered.

All we had is incredible, blazing hot, supernova sex. If you can even call it that. What we do doesn’t actually have a name. It is as a thought- I am surrounded by you and when you withdraw from me, I shrink back into nothingness.

I try not hold that, for once the sweat has dried, we hit a wall, over and over until we are battered and bleeding.

On the way to you, I saw a man walking along. From the back, it could have been you. Cocky stance, his purposeful stride, the way his jeans hung on him, the slant of his belt, his beautiful expensive shoes and his hair, the way it was a tad too long but nicely cut, so it enhanced his head and made him look better than fresh baked bread.

It was a portent, for that is what I have of you; the walking away, the silence of your back, you head help high, as your eyes burn and your heart clenches, from the anger I cause to rise in your throat.

I bet it chokes you at night. It just makes me weep.

Deep pool

You run forward.

A babbling brook, a swiftly running stream, water crashing over the falls.

I am not dreaming of standing in the midst of you, watching you froth and eddy. I wish to see you rising, water and steam flowing down your thighs, as you walk toward me in the heat of the day.

Mouth closed.  Hands open, heart overflowing.

Khelônê, I wish you to be. Not because you stirred me to anger and I dropped a house of distaste over you.

Let me dive into you, float in silence.

Lucky pieces

Fortune finds me. I shy away, turn my face, shut my eyes to it. But I hear it walking up behind me, feel the subtle kiss left behind on my cheek.

Right after, you appeared. Sunlight encased in skin, glowing. Warming.

Lips parting in a smile that caused me to close my eyes. Rays seeping out of you. Your hand lightly brushing my arm, leaving a gentle sigh, a brief memory of summer days.

Do you know that you must illuminate the night sky?

Breathing in the air you exhale, I taste jasmine on my tongue.

Once, I neatly refused. Twice brought a promise for later.

*

Watching the sky-soft violet, streaked with rose, fading to plum. The wind was tired and packing to go home for the night.

Water pulling away from the shore, as geese were shadows breaking free and flowing jerkily across the sand.

Then, night descended. First the smell of leather, smoke, vetiver.  Then your voice, coiled around my head. Sitting next to me, the heat of your body singed me.  Dark, dark you are. Inside, outside, every layer.

I was told sulfur stinks. Yet your breath is redolent of cloves.

You ask for later. I pretend that I have it to give.

*

So you think

There you are, so fresh and sweet-faced.

But your  turgid and pulsating cock swings to painful attention when I pass.

It screams that you are a man, no matter the tender contours of your face. The crisp newness of your college degree hanging just slightly askew on your stark white bedroom wall. The new leather smell of your car; the gleam of your newly-minted money from your first real adult wages job.

Because you cannot understand that I do not possess the secrets of the universe between my legs, you sniff around my skirts like a rabid hyena in need of bloody meat.

Your eyes are on me-your sparrow. Mine are on…men who fill my dreams, as I do yours.

You think that because your piston fires rapidly, that your gun can pop off round after round, that your sac is smooth and tight as a drum, that you matter.

As you pull on your over-eager cock at night, wishing it was my lips wrapped around you, I am sleeping. Not dreaming of your body, but only of the silence so dark, it rivals a tomb.

When I awake, it is a man that causes me to smile.When I deign to spend my morning in such a fashion, that is.

Not you, you half-formed idealist.You do not darken the threshold of a spare thought.

All I have for you is orgasmic heartache, spasmodic pain. Tears mingled with shock that you were fooled.

Run. Run back into the woods, in the shelter of the quiet copse where you belong, close to your dam and sire.

For you are not old enough, strong enough, wise enough. You cannot spread me and ride me under I am in a panting lather.

You are not ready nor tall enough in your mind, to ride this ride.

Kiss my shadow as it floats over you in farewell, for my kindness.

I could have held your mind in my hands and cracked that tender egg open.

Carelessly letting the yolk spill between my fingers, distracted by other matters as I shake it from my slippery palms.

à la minute

The feel of your lips on mine.

Your hands, pressed against my curving hips.

Your breath, escaping your parted lips, as your pupils constrict.

My head lolls back, as you enter into me violently and clear my brain of everything that does not matter.

Only you remain.

Unsteady

How can I tell you of my split consciousness or of my fractured will?

You would not be able to look at me the same, for it would pierce the very heart of you. The tender heart that drew me in, that I promised to cherish and protect.

I am the same yet different. There are parts of me that are growing, others that are dead.

As much as I love you, I love thinking of of others. Their soft lips, their naked breasts, the curve of their asses, the imagined scent that emanates from between their legs.

I love you and my soul thrills like a bird heralding Spring, when I see you pick up our youngest and dry her tears.

But there is a part of me that wants to leave you there-frozen, time still surrounding you-and go fuck others.

I might want a pair or a trio. I may prefer to line them up and go from one wet eager mouth to the next, until the final one gets filled with my hot sticky seed.  Or it may please me to slip away and sped a weekend fucking a sex machine in all her holes, over and over, until the need is quieted and spent.

It has nothing to do or for you. It is me, my libido, my curiosity.

You however, do not dampen the flames when you toss me crumbs of attention.

The lie I will not tell  is that you are the same.  You are different.

The children, the house the dogs, the phone, your sister, my Mom,  the bake sale, the garden, the old friendly widow across the street, your latest project. They are crowding out the space in your mind that should belong to only me.

You are not able to see it, you snap at me when I mention that I feel left out at times. But you promised me that you would never run out of time for me.

Remember?

Even when you let me fuck you-yes, you let me at times,  for your mind is already dropping kids off at school the next day- I feel that I am an intruder. A distraction from the more important things that you do everyday.

Should I apologize for feeling bitter over it? Do you expect me to become neutered and asexual, due to the rhythm of our grown-up lives?

I am your husband. I do not want to beg you for your loving touch, your soft words.

You have changed. You have.

I want you to change back.

++++

You speak of change as if it is unilateral, not bilateral. As if it is only my issue.

You get impatient with me, with how I do not have the same amount of time to give to you. You are right–I don’t. But is that your only reason for getting bent out of shape?

Funny that you think I can’t see how you get distracted when the brunette neighbor  from next door runs by on her daily afternoon trail past our house. I do not fault you for looking. But don’t blame me for your dick getting hard or the fact that I am not childless as she is.

Of course she has plenty of energy to screw her husband, as much as he likes and hang off his every word when he speaks. She is not juggling kids, this house, your Mom, work and all those things that make up our life. Or, as I see it should be called, my life.

You and I are living in these parallel spaces. You get that dejected look in your eye to my refusal, when you want a quickie while the spaghetti is cooking and the kids are screaming with glee in the backyard.

Yes, when we had one child, I could hike up my skirt and push my ass against yours for all of the hot 5 minutes you needed. I love you, so when you need me, I want to give, to satisfy.

When we had two children, I did have more energy and could also spend the time you needed, after they were put to bed.

Our lives are not the same, we have more of everything. We had another baby, I went back to work, your Mom needed support after your Dad passed. This new house, while beautiful, requires more time to clean.

And yes, I need a few minutes, not just a hurried bath or shower.

I do not make excuses, I only expect you to understand that sometimes, I have nothing more to give. I just want to sleep.

I do not always want your dick poking into me. I just want you to hold me. Cliche, but true. I love being in your arms just as much as when we shared our first kiss.

Hold me tight and keep me warm, as I grab just enough sleep to get me through the next day.

Were are here in the present, not in the past. So why are you acting like we are still those people, those single kids?

I have not stopped loving you one bit. You mean more to me than ever before. Am I suppose to neglect parts of our life, because you need more attention?  What more do you want me to give?

The porn websites, the times you jack off in the shower, your discreet admiration of other women…I can deal with it; we don’t need to speak of it.

But your silent persistence that I have changed and that I neglect you…you are wrong.

That is what is in the bed with us at night-a cold shadow called Resentment.  I can only lie there, when you come to me, already blaming me.

I have freely given you my love, my heart, my time. Bore our babies and see my changed body everyday in the mirror. Did all I could to please you, support you, be a partner.

Do you think I don’t care? Honestly, you know better.

You are not dealing with the changes within yourself as easily as you should.

I also want you to change back. Go back to the man who wears his ring around his finger, as well as his heart and mind.

Come back to us.

Come back.

Good

When you call, I do not come. But I will,  eventually.

Like that silky-haired stray that scratched at your door, all through your time at University.

Your hands are seeking my hips but only close around air.

Your teeth are grinding together, wishing my nipples were caught between instead of nothing.

Warmth from my body does not reach you, for when you turn towards me, all you have is a cool pillow, a place where I once was.  A shadow settling in the dark, stirred by your breath.

I am leaving when you arrive. Not staying nearly long enough when I appear.

Running off, not leaving a note. Leaving you to guess.

You talk, I say nothing. I talk, expect no answer in return, for those brief bursts have no need of consent.

When you want my lips, you see my lipstick-stained tissues, tossed to the floor in the bathroom,  floating memories of when you wiped my lips clean with your tongue.

My scent lingers on my robe left hanging on your closet and in my panties tossed carelessly away.

You sigh as your nostrils wonder when they will be greeted by the curling heat of your bath, with me soaking within.

My hair is bound to my head, a tight coil when you want it to be free for your fingers to twist and tangle. Yet other times, I walk around with a tangled nest that you are itching to comb.

Why do you want me?

I do not cook for you, wash your clothes, straighten your untidy dresser drawers. Nor do I chase you with your keys.

Stepping over the mail pooling by your door, I grab the paper from the pile,  on my way to make tea and eat honey by the spoonful. In your clean kitchen that was not cleaned by me.

Not going to have your baby, make a home for you, give any of my life to keep you anchored to this earth one moment more than your fated strand.

What good am I to you?

Is it my arrogant assumption that you will be there, that keeps you…there?

Or is it that when I am there, it is more than any other woman’s here?

Rough, hot, tangy, sweet.

Pounding, sweaty, burning, grinding.

Fulfilling.

The good I am for you-to you…

You know.

Ruins

Touch me.

Run your fingers up my things, my skirt giving way to your forearms. Your eyes slowly closing to half-mast, you lips dripping with honeyed flashes of your thoughts right up to this moment.

Slide a finger into me, as the voice tumbles from the radio, wrapping us in the ticker tape of things we need but cannot control. The percentage points,  fall of the index,  rise of the fund, the quarterly earnings.

I sigh as your fingers reach in further. You swap my tension for pleasure, betting on the future soon to be mature that I will melt, flow away. Profit from my give, not your take.

Differentiate my demand. Push me back, those slips of papers, coded with data that signals the rise and fall of society, spilling out of your briefcase on the carpeted floor.

Nonstop goes the voices, the dings and chirps, the exclamations from the voice , joined by others on the radio. Jumping accents, skipping time zones, they all speak of the same thing.

Make that thing, the chasing of that thing, your fulcrum. Lift me from here to there, right there, where nothing matters but the way I feel.

The way you cause me to feel.

Underlying all of this is the pressure that builds, to stokes you, propels you between my thighs and into the heart of me.  There is never a risk that you will not satisfy the obligation that you promised me the day we met.

Fuck me, here. Amidst the carnage, you extract the viable and precious metal. Trade what I need for what you want.

Condense the hours into rough minutes, as somewhere, a man rises with the flight of the sun, joining a flood of similar minds, to do battle with the monster that is never full.

Kick at the briefcase full of promises of dreams, let those wisps of what will be flutter away to what is.

What that is:you inside of me, plunging, extracting and filling, pushing for the final closing of your day.

Exchange the the heat for the coolness of release.

There, you fall and rest. Like the end of the day numbers.

The sounds of cars gliding past penetrate the smoked evening air, as your sweat, salty and tangy, provides a slick glaze along your spine.

Fingers brushing your ears, I softly sing your favorite song.

And the voices still run over and around us. Testament to the edifice that you never can avoid or truly scale.

Count them-those voices- like sheep my darling, as you surrender to your loss against the monster.

Yet you conquered me.

As always.

Defense against the Dark Art

“…Amazement seized the mortal men and gods

To see the hopeless trap, deadly to men.

From her comes all the race of womankind

The deadly female race and tribe of wives

Who live with mortal men and bring them harm.”

Hesiod-Theogony/Works

~

They called her the beautiful evil. Pandora-’kalon kakon‘.

You think I am she, reincarnated as the device to hold your hate.

But I was not curious of you. It was you, that attempted to pry me open, against my clear admonition that I was more wisdom than your fragile mind could hold.

You-when you paint me in the sick hard colors of your desire, when you kneel before me and command me to fulfill your fantasies-are what that should be shut away, until you become sane.

There is a slumbering beast which threatens too pen its yellow eyes, that keeps you leashed away from kindness. Halts you from seeing my strength as only mine, not a threat to you.

Messalina. Gorgo. Sempronia. Eryxo.

Despite your efforts,  we persist. In spite of the mineral that follows out of the cauldron of your soul.

+++

“Do not let a woman practice reasoned argument,  that is frightful.”

-Democritus of Abdera, Fragment 110

~

It delights you, gives you a startling thrill, to think that I am not aware of the plans you have, the knots you tie while I am sleeping.

Under the cover of night, you concoct the details of your dominion.

By the flash of the noon Sun, I dismantle you. Piece by piece. As was the Parthenon, to be carted off and wondered about.

Do not offer me the lash, with the sour syrup of false praise on your lips. Cover your bared back, your flexing haunches. Cover your erect shame with the truth.

Which is:

you want to whip, not be whipped. You think I am too dim to see into it. Yet and always,  I burn softly, the source of my own light.

Theano. Damo. Hypatia. Leontion.

The more you push, the better we become. Push and push again until the force of our minds washes you away, as sand goes back into the sea at high tide

+++

“We have hetaerae for pleasure, pallakae to care for our daily body’s needs and gynaekes to bear us legitimate children and to be faithful guardians of our households.”

-Demosthenes, On Wives and Heitarai , Speeches 59.122

~

Every and all things are categories for you. Neat rigid boxes into which you force spheres, pyramids, heptagons, handfuls of stars.

The nature of my gender furls into your mind. It/I/Us/Them must be contained.

You have labeled me evil, prone to fantasy and superstition.  Weak and easily held by dreams and unreality.

I go to my mothers, aunts, sisters and call, for they deliver to me tools to defeat you. The magic mirror in my hand shows me what you are.

It removes the glamour you cast, unsheathes your false humility.

Maiden, Mother. Crone. Call us what you will but our ears are closed.

Thargelia, Aspasia. Phryne, Archeanassa,Thaïs.

How can anyone harness the beauty of a molecule, so artfully arranged in the terms,  sp¹ sp² sp³, for such a perverted sense of self?

Not selflessness. That is a  solid state utterly foreign to you.

+++

You.

I am wary, on guard.

You.

Since we crawled out of the Mind of God, you have been my unwanted adversary.

Using my love, my kindness, my physical weakness as weapons to skewer me.

Causing my heart to shrivel with neglect, for my desire to take shelter elsewhere.

You put me in a lonely cold place and denied me even the rudiments of heat.

Doesn’t even the dog get scraps at the Master’s table? Not in your house.

I have wiped my tears, bound my sorrow in my hair.

This time, the Hammer for the Witch is in my hands.

Our hands.

We watch you scream but we proceed on.

Ever on.

[inordinate]

Thoughts of you.

Circling in my head, in the  manner my fellows are buffeted by their whirling passions on the second level of the Inferno.

Your smooth skin, your lean frame.

I imagine you would melt on my tongue, if I dared to taste.  Sweetest cream coating my palates hard and soft .

Only to stuff myself, gorging on you in a rushed, conscious state.

Like my fellows, I look at the acorn and the water and do not partake.

Nimis -Ardenter -Forente.

+++

I sleep in torment but plead with Eunoë to bring her gifts to my waking mind.

The sight of you hits my nostrils like the bite of acetone.  My teeth grind and flake away at the sound of your voice.

My soul-circling on the mountain, veering eternally between levels seven and six.

Wishing.

My body stand at the banks of Acheron, frozen.  Clutching a reed of humility, fingers tingling.

Craving you.

+++

Only the brute is good at coupling, and copulation is the lyricism of the masses. To copulate is to enter into another — and the artist never emerges from himself“. -Baudelaire

Primer

You cannot speak of it.

Without a word from you, I proceed.

Kneeling over you, I sink down on your erect dick.  You did not need to touch me, for I want to moisten and lubricate and let it run down the length of you. To tangle in the silky dark bush that covers your nutsac, that swirls along the root of you and creeps towards your stomach.

The sharp pain of my barely warm cunt encasing you makes us both gasp.

So, I proceed.

I move, slightly. Those are my hips.

My mouth moves at a faster pace. That is what you want.

Reading to you, words from my past. Words that no one else knows, but me and the dawn or the dim candlelight that saw them born.

As I read to you, you relax and yet you go deeper in to me. I receive more and more until I feel you pushing against the mouth of my womb.

I try to angle away but you push me down firmly, causing me to stumble and lose my place along the words that you need so badly to hear.

The words  are coming at a rapid pace, tumbling out of my lips and cracking against your eardrums.  You clench your jaw to keep the sounds in but they are leaking out, like smoke from a chimney on a cold, cold day.

For every story I share, you give me an orgasm.  You hold tightly to my wrists, so that I keep my place and do not drop my book.

My book. A secret journal. The thing that binds us to your fantasies and my heart.

Because you cannot speak, I do.

I use my mouth to push sounds from my reality into yours. My pussy talks to you, as it gets wetter and wetter, coaxing you to get harder than you imagined you could.

I cry out, as you make me come more and more.

You feel my hair brush against the tops of your thighs, as I bow backwards.

The serpent that I have heard of but not seen unwinds and shoots up, it head pushing out of my mouth. My breath pushes past it, bees buzzing as they are released from the hive of my soul.

Because I must, I pull back from the eternity you flung me into and keep reading. The words are blurry to my eyes but I can recite them from the memories craved in my skull.

So, I proceed.

I must push you to where I just emerged from.

I proceed until you are there, trapped;  my name steaming in the crisp air of the darkened room.

Regressed{stage2}

Hungry, you call for me. No response.

You go room to room.

I am not there.

My phone goes unanswered, messages are not returned.

You feel ignored.

Nervous, you call others, timidly asking if they know where I am.

They do not. One even snorts and hangs up on you, not dignifying your request with even a dismissal.

Eventually, you go to bed. Stomach gnawing in more than one way.

You drift, fingers twitching, wanting to cradle my engorged mammary.

Suddenly, you feel my weight, straddling you, knocking you from your uneasy slumber.

Silently, you stare up  at me. Angry, horny, lonely, eager.

Pulling off my sweater, taking off my shirt, I am stripped to a bra and tank top.

My areolas are outlined, in the damp circles from my leaking milk.

Your cock springs to life, causing you to gasp.

Reaching your hands for me caused your face to get slapped the last time, so you wait.

Slowly I take off my top and bra.

I stuff the damp part of one of the cups in your mouth and command you to suck it.

You do. You do anything I tell you to.

With a small smile, I replace the fabric with my right  nipple.

Then I switch, allowing you to drain the other breast.

Content and full, you ask me why I was not home when you arrived.

I slap your mouth as my  reply.

Your training never ends.

Here

“Let’s go for a ride,’ he said softly, as he pulled me out the door.

It was cold; big fluffy flakes like dreams falling thickly.

Driving, he barely spoke, did not even turn the radio on. I reached for it but he pushed my hand away.

We stopped at the side entrance of the oldest graveyard in town. I thought we were going somewhere. I had strolled around that place for years.

Arm in arm, we walked down the freshly shoveled paths. I heard the soft muffle of our footsteps. Not a bird was chirping, no movement but the dancing snow.

Veering left, he led me across the frozen grass to the old Knopf family crypt. It was still in good shape, unlike the Phillips across from it and the other crumbling angels monuments of years gone by. Not anyone left on those ancient trees to tend to the upkeep.

Suddenly, he turned, grabbed me, kissed me. His lips were chilled and his breath was hard. Not soft, as he normally was when he opened his mouth to me.

Placing his right hand on top of my head, he pushed, and began to sink, so I followed him. To my knees, then onto my back.

He did not speak, he just stared. Long moments without a blink. Only partially supported on his elbows, his weight pressing me down.

The cold seeped into my coat, my skin. I felt it easing into my muscles, wrapping lovingly around my joints.
I began to shiver.

His lifted his hips, making room for his hands, that slid up my skirt. A fresh blast of wind hit my always cold thighs.

Teeth chattering a tear seeping form the corner of my eye, I stared back, confused. Then defiant.

Then, a warm coal. Heat, pushing into me.

Dazed from the snow falling onto me, I hung onto it, welcomed it.

I turned my head and took at the ruined, worn tombstone to the right of me. And felt that I was next.

“Where are you? “he asked.

“Home,” I replied.

“Are you afraid? When you are in the ground, I cannot warm you this way.”

I paused.

And truthfully told hm ‘no.’

There he took me. His eyes radiating an acceptance of death, his body cushioned from the hard cold  ground by my softness.

Offering me his tongue, I tasted ice.

Looking up at the sky, blinded by the snow, I felt the stone angels, blinded by time, sigh softly, gently  for me.

Nip

Your words burn my ear.

“Do you need me?” said so softly.

With joy, I nod, as the burning hole in my soul expands.