She is a sculptor. Her medium is freckled skin and rolling hips and breathless gasps. She skims her fingers along milky planes and watches as her piece comes alive. Her fingers know all the right places; a gentle touch there causes heaving ridges of backbone to stiffen and arch, a curving stroke here sends a tsunami of goose bumps rippling across skin. Tiny hairs rise at her command as she breathes life into perfection.
She is a historian. Her eyes trace and catalogue every inch of every surface. She files away into her archives every sound, every murmur. She can recite, with her eyes closed, the exact location and width of the tiny hollows that frame her back. She discovers what was always there and it takes her breath away to realize that it is not only her past, but her present and future as well.
She is an explorer. The only one who dares to cross into the snarled, nonsensical terrain. She is not the first to try and stake a claim, nor will she be the second, or the third, but mark her words, she will be the last. No one else bothers to stay and tease out the tangles. They just hack their way through or skirt around the mess, missing the whole essence of what they've discovered. It's not easy to be the one that braves the labyrinth. Sometimes she gets lost; sick with fear and distracted by strange phrases and grueling journeys, but she is always gently pushed back onto the path and guided home again.
She is afraid. She's wrong and scared and ashamed. Her secrets have escaped and grown fangs. They prey on her as she walks down hallways and across streets. They gnaw on her insides and settle on top of her lungs, suffocating her. She can't help it, she lashes out blindly to try and fight them off, but they just laugh at her. They are like water closing over her head and she's sinking fast until she realizes that there is a hand clasping hers. A hand that's always been there. She cannot believe she forgot, even for a second, that she's never been alone. Whether it was pulling her or tugging her back or just keeping her head above water, that hand has always been holding hers. She finally stops resisting and it drags her upright, knocking off the squatting beasts on her chest so she can finally breathe.
Sometimes she still sees them out of the corners of her eyes, but a soft tug on her pinky makes them fade away, and she knows she is finally free.