But words can never harm me
In the mirror, her pink mouth runs away from her. Features animated, the lifeblood of fear because I’m in love with you is not I love you. Five words cut to three and bleeding, the declarative sentence of damnation. Eyes sparkle like the ocean that drowned her. A killing weight lifted while she collapsed. Mother made memory and she is glad.
He stands in the doorway and she does not notice. Too lost to three words on repeat: a Gregorian chant, ominous and majestic in its invocation. And her heart is full while his mind empties. Her. The quicksilver sylph, flickering in the shadows of dark clothing. Flame bright hair: yellow white and ageless in its fairy-length. Her pixie ears. The twisting of her mouth into invisible words; spells that brought him to this moment. An economy of motion, his arms held akimbo in a show of annoyance.
She sees. Him. Finally. In the doorway halfway between what they were, but are, as she fumbles for an earring and he chuckles a laugh. Jerking gestures she counters with the fluidity of her fey grace. She’s still trying him on for size, feeling around their familiar patterns for the ambiguity of ardor. Pushing against it, making the strange whole. A part of their puzzle she cannot let go.
Bending into him; he bows to catch the weight, adjusting the earring as she whispers a sigh. She smells of copper penny blood and cinnamon. Mine. The thought slips a shiver down his spine. They are cats, autonomous and angry, their domestication filled with anguish. Ava (she will never be Rebecca to him) and the phantom of a child; Derek in the house that will never be built. Ownership has no part in this. Everything is death and they are a stopgap. Surgeons who heal pain with pain and expect something to change. Lives made with stitches that break.
Holding his hand, rough calluses and tanned skin, she thumbs her way across his brittle surface. Could make an incision deft and deep with words they do not speak. She knows. The taste of I love you on her tongue would wreak havoc on their simplicity. He kisses her knuckles with a hot glance: toasted almond eyes and the night’s agenda forgotten. She falls into the doorjamb, her dress around her waist, her thighs a cage and he falls into her, the doorjamb, the doorway between what they are and what they become in moments like this.
“I love you,” a whisper without fervor. Her eyes open and frightened. Impulse. Unplanned; like the pulse beat of fragility as she moves over him. He watches her mouth for the joke that does not come as he comes, quiet and straining for control. She sighs into a smile of painful pleasure. Lets him think it is the heat of their passion and a slip that he can bear. Allows him to see her, flushed and raw with the shine of unshed tears. Breath like broken glass, harsh and beautiful against her neck. He half hopes that she realizes he wants to make this last.
~*~
He stands in the doorway and she does not notice. Too lost to three words on repeat: a Gregorian chant, ominous and majestic in its invocation. And her heart is full while his mind empties. Her. The quicksilver sylph, flickering in the shadows of dark clothing. Flame bright hair: yellow white and ageless in its fairy-length. Her pixie ears. The twisting of her mouth into invisible words; spells that brought him to this moment. An economy of motion, his arms held akimbo in a show of annoyance.
She sees. Him. Finally. In the doorway halfway between what they were, but are, as she fumbles for an earring and he chuckles a laugh. Jerking gestures she counters with the fluidity of her fey grace. She’s still trying him on for size, feeling around their familiar patterns for the ambiguity of ardor. Pushing against it, making the strange whole. A part of their puzzle she cannot let go.
Bending into him; he bows to catch the weight, adjusting the earring as she whispers a sigh. She smells of copper penny blood and cinnamon. Mine. The thought slips a shiver down his spine. They are cats, autonomous and angry, their domestication filled with anguish. Ava (she will never be Rebecca to him) and the phantom of a child; Derek in the house that will never be built. Ownership has no part in this. Everything is death and they are a stopgap. Surgeons who heal pain with pain and expect something to change. Lives made with stitches that break.
Holding his hand, rough calluses and tanned skin, she thumbs her way across his brittle surface. Could make an incision deft and deep with words they do not speak. She knows. The taste of I love you on her tongue would wreak havoc on their simplicity. He kisses her knuckles with a hot glance: toasted almond eyes and the night’s agenda forgotten. She falls into the doorjamb, her dress around her waist, her thighs a cage and he falls into her, the doorjamb, the doorway between what they are and what they become in moments like this.
“I love you,” a whisper without fervor. Her eyes open and frightened. Impulse. Unplanned; like the pulse beat of fragility as she moves over him. He watches her mouth for the joke that does not come as he comes, quiet and straining for control. She sighs into a smile of painful pleasure. Lets him think it is the heat of their passion and a slip that he can bear. Allows him to see her, flushed and raw with the shine of unshed tears. Breath like broken glass, harsh and beautiful against her neck. He half hopes that she realizes he wants to make this last.
~*~