Burning Chic
I don't know how long he's been here with me. The sky has darkened past twilight and I've lost all track of anything but him. I miss this the most: his arms holding me so I don't fall deeper into the abyss. He's always known how to hold me up—from those first moments in Seattle, when a broken little girl was learning to heal from young-love's betrayal, to a fractured woman who's been destroyed by it all over again.
I've wept and cried while he rocks me back and forth in his solid grip, and I feel for the first time in many years that maybe the shattered parts of me could be put back together as a stained glass window instead of thrown into the trash like a clay pot. Edward reminds me that where there is brokenness, there can once again be light, making even the floating and dancing dust beautiful again with scattered hues of rainbows.
But I'm afraid of burning; I always have been, and I'm surrounded by it.
On one side a flaming forest, sparked by lightning and burning the world to ash, and the other a refiner's fire. I've nowhere to go where I won't be set ablaze.
My mind jumps around to different thoughts: escape, stay, run, fight, march, bow down, kill, sacrifice. Nothing stays in place, for there is no steadiness. I can't leave, it's never been that simple. I've played the quite wife for so long, it's become my reality. But I can't stay either.
I steel my mind for a moment, long enough to look up at him. Edward's head is resting on the mattress and his eyes are closed while he cradles me in his lap. It's been hours, but he doesn't complain. I think he's trying to lift the burden off of me and carry it by taking my weight onto himself. It's not his to bear, but I now he won't see it that way.
He's too good, and my heart aches with the pain of years long gone and time missed. I wish to take back all the lost moments, to become the girl I was and stay in the past with him. I'm in love with ghosts—his and mine, and that strength I've sacrificed both unknowingly and unrealized.
I've lied to myself for many years, saying I've stayed for the children and that they can't have a shattered life like mine was when Mom left Dad. I want better for them. But how much better can it be to have a father filled with power and rage and a mother made only of submission? They've been born of splinters of me. How can I save them and build them into the glass with me if I can't save myself?
My lips touch Edward's neck of their own admission, hoping the touch might heal wounds so deep within me I've become sick with infection. To my mind, he's a saint and a single brush of my skin to his will create miracles in me. Oh, but to be that simple.
Goosebumps break out under my lips, his nerves responding to mine with the electricity that's always crackled between us. I pull back, moving away from his skin before we fuse, but it's no use. Our shadows and fates and souls meld instantly, and my retreat is matched by his advance.
He lifts me from his lap to the bed, and I know only lips and flushing flesh as noises escape my chest in a prayer of deliverance. My body hasn't known pleasure in a long time. Too long. But it recognizes its mate in him: the only man to draw a release from my pores and cracked and marred life.
I'd like to believe I know him like I think I do, but I don't.
He's a different man than the boy I knew, and the way he touches me says it all. Life has hardened and matured him; he shows and teaches me with the brush of his fingers and tongue. Everything in me screams for him, and even the sound pours from my throat. I'm melting beneath him, then around him when our passion penetrates the surface.
A part of him loves me still, maybe never stopped, and I meet him there. He drinks my body in, following me into the fire of refining and pushing me deeper until there's nothing but white light.
I exhale into new life.
xxxxxxxxxx
A/N: A little heavy on the poetic side, but my fingers have a mind of their own this morning.
KIT music inspiration.