The boy, with the dent in his chest, inhales so loudly
that his ribs pop with a resounding boom. They shatter and collapse,
sinking to his feet. His life is lived slumped over, never making eye
contact because he believes it is a spell. His spine grows twisted, broken,
bent. His heart is locked away in a bone prison. With his eyes to the ground,
he is running blindly forward into a sea of decisions and failure. His
confused feet charge him head first into the girl with the swollen skin. She
sees his spine and ribcage ankles as intriguing, and he doesn't mind her welts.

He touches her, feels her, learns her.
She holds him, feels him, learns him.
She is his, and he belongs to her.
They are each other.

He sees the world, sees everything he was never seeing. Her welts become
a foreign thing to him. She was different, less beautiful compared to the sights
he was now seeing. Her mind tried its hardest to forget his twisted nature. She
could only remember how he felt her skin and called it amazing, stunning.
Her skin welted in his memory; his spine curled in hers, but snapped back
straight when she called for him. She shouted a final plea for the future.
He whooped and hollered and yelled so loudly that his inhale broke his
ribs and sunk them back to his feet,
as his head slid back into its horizontal position.