She is awake in the dark.
She is not alone, but alone is with her. Alone fills the space of the darkness and presses down against her body and her imagination. Alone makes heavy cold promises that steal her breath and her future.
The woman is not alone but alone is all that she can see.
The vision alone offers fills her mind. Like a fog, alone expands into every corner of her consciousness. Overwhelms her senses. Alone is thick and gray and wet and chilled and silent and it tastes of iron.
Alone is familiar and terrifying. Alone rakes its fingernails along her cheek and taunts her with its return. Alone carves her name in the silence.
Alone makes cold heavy promises with whispered breath stolen from her chest.
She stares into the darkness of alone and sees the future.
She reaches through the darkness.
She reaches greedily for the one who is with her.
She runs her hands over his warmth, listens to the exhalations of his breath, whispers her needs silently against his skin, tastes the salt of him. She wraps her hand around him, pulses her grip insistently as she writhes against him. She feels him harden against her fingertips. She presses the length of her body against his, pulls his arms around her waist, wanting to be one with him, wanting protection from herself . . . alone.
Although the room is dark, she averts her eyes, afraid of what she might reveal.
Afraid of what he might see.
She tucks her face into his neck, taking shelter in the curves and in the hollows of his shoulder blades.
She does not kiss him, afraid that he will taste the metaled scent of her fear.
The heavy metal scent of her alone.
Her eyes and face averted, she pulls herself up small and tight against him. Her knees at his sides, her body pressed to his, her skin against his. All she wants in the world is to disappear into this moment . . . to disappear into him.
Invisibility is protection.
The alone cannot find what it cannot see.
She rocks against him, finding a rhythm into nothingness before she takes him within her.
She needs him for this journey, but she is not concerned that he know the destination.
She runs her hands over his warmth, listens to the exhalations of his breath, whispers her needs silently against his skin, tastes the salt of him. Rocks against him. Looks for the path to nothing that will save her from the alone.
Looks for the rhythm she can ride to invisibility.
There.
She lifts away from him and then fills herself with him . . . a sudden downward movement.
He holds her tightly as she moves against him.
She wants to disappear.
He holds her tightly.
She wants to disappear; she wants to move past longing and loss and belief and betrayal and fear and hope . . . she wants to move past feeling.
She wants to move past wanting.
She wants to move past dreaming.
She wants to move past vulnerability.
She wants to disappear.
She holds him tightly and tries to move past hope.
Her movements grow more intense, more urgent, more greedy, more selfish.
More solitary.
She needs him for this journey, but she is not concerned that he know the destination.
He is here but he is not here.
Already.
And then there is that moment of nothingness.
Of blinding white nothingness.
A moment that tastes of nothing and smells of nothing and sounds of nothing.
A moment in which she is blinded to the realities of her life.
A moment in which the alone recedes.
A moment in which she feels invisible.
A moment in which she feels safe.
A moment in which she disappears.
A moment that passes.
Into the next.
She runs her hands over his warmth, listens to the exhalations of his breath, whispers her needs silently against his skin, tastes the salt of him, now mingled with the salt of her tears. She weeps uncontrollably into the hollows of his neck and shoulder blades. A new rhythm now as she presses her body to his . . . a rhythm of hope and desire and need and intense vulnerability.
A moment in which she is exquisitely aware of all that may be taken from her.
A moment in which alone reaches and scrapes a single frozen nail along her neck.
A moment of claiming.
A moment that passes.
Into the next.
Still holding him within her, she lifts her face to his. Looks deeply into his eyes and sees what is there. Kisses him deeply and tastes what is there.
A heavy metaled taste.
She holds his gaze after the kiss and whispers her need into the space between them.
stay
please stay
please
