So Close I Can Taste It

But enough about me. Let’s talk about you. You with the good hair and the dark evening eyes. You with the tiny butterflies fluttering around in your stomach and the knots collecting in your throat.

I can see how fragile you are. I can feel it when I place my hands on you. I catch its scent when you stay perfectly still.

I can sense, too, the infinite strength of your potential. The hardness of bone and the heat of your fixation. I like your hunger. I contemplate it. I fantasize about its release. I can taste it when you are close to me. Soft, yielding, honeyed.

Don’t look out at them. They cannot see as I do. The visions I have of you unfolding endlessly across a midnight sky. Stars and satellites blinking in the blackness of your velvet mind. Tell me what you see out there in the vastness of empty silent space.

What is it like to feel the first brush of magnificent wind beneath your brand new wings.

What would you offer me in return for the rush of freedom from all the torments you keep inside. To lay that heavy armor down for just a little while. To spread yourself wide open and fear no pain. To recoil from nothing. Reach out and grasp the things you want. Place all of your trust into my sensitive waiting hands.

This world is a menacing place for creatures like us, sweet thing. We have been forced against our own design for centuries. Dragged across the grates of the punishments we never once deserved. It has been an agony we quietly keep locked away. A burden we bear alone in chambers of the heart we lack the words and permission to reveal.

You close your eyes when I kiss your mouth. You moan from the depths of your soul when I encircle your neck. And I can feel the way you need it like a thin moth seeks red thick flame. It has been a lifetime of longing and loss. Bruised knees, bloody gums, tear-scorched skin.

A never ending search.

And I can’t save you, angel. I’m shattered glass just like you, beautiful and true.

I cannot fix the broken things. Cannot stop the storms from crashing in.

But I know the shape of each cut and the sharp angle of everything they ever threw at you to keep you trembling. I know the map of pleasure and the coordinates of desire’s peak. I will take you far from harm. Be your warmth and keep you safe. Give you everything I am and everything I have to finally soothe the ache.