Disclaimer: I don't own Farscape or its characters, nor do I own Diane Ackerman's poem. I make no profit from this little ficlet.
Author: SG1SamFan/LemonEmily33
Rating: K+/PG
Tags: Chiana/John, Chiana POV, canon AU
Summary: "Sweep me through your many-chambered heart/if you like, or leave me here/flushed amid the sap-ooze and blossom." Chiana steals to live, steals to enjoy, steals moments. Chiana POV. AU after 1.22 "Family Ties."

Sweep me through your many-chambered heart
if you like, or leave me here, flushed
amid the sap-ooze and blossom: one more dish
in the banquet called April, or think me hard-
won all your days full of women. Weeks
later, till I felt your arms around
me like a shackle, heard all the sundown
wizardries the fired body speaks.

Down the hall, fingers brushing wall, tilt my head to catch all the glimpses before the others see them. Show my neck, false submission and I could kill them without blinking.

But I won't. No, no. Family. (Sort of. Not like Nerri.) Family like you don't trust much but you trust a little. Better than nothing.

Him. Trust him more than the others, somehow: blue eyes, dark hair, skin so pink and flushed like a pretty flower, touch him – soft, too soft, could kill him but I never would. Kisses me so softly – I lean in again and he pulls back, tells me with his body "not now."

He comes back alive.

Yearning. I show my neck, submissive, seductive. I could kill him without blinking but I can't lure him to where I want him.

Her or me – but why choose? Why not fluidity, sweeping through Moya's chambers, backs pressed to walls and lips pressed to lips and necks exposed.

I steal to live, steal to enjoy, steal moments (in case I show my neck and someone cuts it before I can blink).

He comes to me, finally.

He comes, and I come. Alive.

It's gotta be enough. Gotta be.

Won't be.

Tell me why, if it was no more than this,
the unmuddled tumble, the renegade kiss,
today, rapt in a still life and unaware,
my paintbrush dropped like an amber hawk;
thinking I'd heard your footfall on the stair,
I listened, heartwise, for the knock.

~Diane Ackerman, "Sweep Me Through Your Many-Chambered Heart"

A/N: I wrote a paper on this poem and couldn't help thinking that the lines, "Sweep me through your many-chambered heart,/if you like, or leave me here, flushed amid the sap-ooze and blossom" just sounded so Chiana - putting up a front, trying not to get attached, and then, ultimately, falling anyway.