His fingers were in her hair,
gold twine wrapped around ivory stumps.
Their legs were thoughtlessly intertwined,
ivy twisting and curling with ease.
Together,
they moved so gracefully;
at the quiet melody of Bach
or the deafening sound of cannon fodder,
they would never miss a single nuance,
a single chance to lay limb and limb.
His eyes, silvery taupe,
laid upon her languidly,
skimming over her sweet cream skin
and thinking of its syrupy taste
while she only thought of his bitter coffee mouth
and Daniel’s breath,
heavy on her face around two p.m.
And with that,
she thought of when she would come home
from whatever she had been doing that day,
a grin in her often somber eyes.
but when she would feel the mechanism click under her skin
and the metal would grind to open,
the light would be lost to pure black.
Shot glasses would be stacked like a house of cards on the coffee table.
pots and pans would be piled in the sink haphazardly,
like shrapnel from the afternoon’s disastrous activities.
And she would sigh,
a honeyed tone fogged with realization
as she would collect the bricks of his card house
and ran the water to dissolve what could be
from the collection of sharp tin in the kitchen.
Her eyes ringed with mascara,
she would shake him awake,
shaking herself like a leaf without the stability of its branch.
Once she saw the gunpowder eyes,
her fire would be extinguished.
He would groan and ask where she’d been.
She would say at work.
He would ask why she went.
She would tell him she didn’t want to,
didn’t want to leave him.
But in truth,
she had wanted to rekindle her flame,
to let it roar in the open air
instead of it being muffled by his touch.
She would apologize,
Her honey scent now sour
with guilt, forced upon her by the guard
who held a pistol to her head,
which held, without her knowledge,
no bullets.
To make it up to him,
to make it up to
anyone else she had hurt that day,
She let him wrap his ivy limbs around her frail body
and consume her -
adorn her with thorned roses
and stinging nettles.
He said they looked beautiful,
made her taste even sweeter,
smell even nicer
and she believed him.
The ****** marked her skin,
leaving red streaks along her arms,
but she thought of them as her flames
finally making an appearance.
She was satisfied in her forest,
where no one would hear her fall,
but everyone would see her burn.