ONE TINY DEATH
She is there, again, golden and pink, sunrise and sunset both, leaning out of her casement with a maddening joy. Her shape is silhouetted against grey and white mountainscapes of cloud. Will she fall, as she waves to her sweating kinsmen and laughs as they ride in reckless endless mindless game?
I shudder when I feel your touch,
And time and breath must cease apace.
Perhaps. If she leans out but a little more, and is, perhaps, interrupted in her gaiety by a touch, a word from an unwelcome Tongue. Perhaps she would shiver, the subtle shift in balance enough to send her over the edge and away into the vastness of the sky.
One careless brush can mean so much
That pain or pleasure's barely known –
And yet no tower here is high enough, not enough sky for her to soar as high as she might, until we are all but dust beneath her elevated feet. Or high enough for her to fall as she may. Perhaps instead she dreams as she watches, a kind of sleepwalk and a kind of sigh upon her pillow as she is alone in the darkness. Perhaps she would that she should never wake.
And every tender whorl upon my skin
Is turned to the image of your own –
From the shadows, she glows when I see her. Glows. Shifting, curling like smoke, energy contained within frail flesh, seeking release always. I yearn to touch her, and give her that release as she desires. As we both desire. Soon I think I shall.
One fleeting pass then you are gone,
One tiny scar to join the rest
She laughs again, and turns to run – never walking, always running – to leave, to rejoin her tall white-toothed kinsmen. One flick of her green skirts, and she is gone, leaving nothing behind her but a burn on my skin as I shrink away from her heat. Nothing.
One tiny death is all I get
And yet I must, with this alone, remain content.