• I realized I was a long way from home. It seemed I had left my paved sidewalks, coffin-esque apartments, disgruntled cars, ant like traffic, and lung staining air for the more subtle intricacies of the country side. Had I been day dreaming? Perhaps I had left my body. Regardless, something caught my attention and struck me as peculiar, never mind that I wasn’t anywhere I was supposed to be. Muddled with the endless sea of swaying grass blades was the charming petals of a poppy. It reminded me of you and I sought to remove it from where it had implanted itself into the ground.
    In horror, the petals recoiled and wilted from my abrasive hand, it knew of my intentions and ruined itself before I had chance to. The petals rotted away and were carried elsewhere by the wind, though the stem still remained, and it wrapped itself like ball and chain about my hand and arm. Its weight was immaculate and under it I was unable to even stand. It stapled my arm to the ground and refused to allow me the comfort or leisure of movement. Like a surgeons needle the portion of stem that had been ripped from its earthy home drove deep and hard into the most noticeable vein of my arm, just above the joint of my elbow. The searing hot pain the etched its jagged lightning bolts into my brain left me dazed and without breath, thou as soon as it had started it had ended and there was no coiling poppy stem, only a smudge of my blood that cascaded down the underside of my arm and into the thirsty dirt. I heard your breath beside me, all too familiar for me to forgot or not notice. I missed you so, the way your shallow pants tickled at my neck always sent chills through my nerves. I didn’t chance a word, afraid that in such a bold motion the fragility of the moment would be dashed and I’d lose you again to whatever had brought you here.
    So I laid out next to you, our bodies pleasantly parallel to the clouds over head. We floated amongst the emerald blades of grass, each passing breath from the rising currents in air causing their tips to bob and sway like the mousey strands of your hair. It reminded me of the ocean, the summers breeze like the ebbing tide, bearing faint resemblance to the sound of a conch when pressed to the lobe of an ear. And each grassy fiber wriggled under the soothing force of an approaching white cap. We didn’t touch, or talk, kiss, or even hold hands. As there wasn’t much point. Instead, we dreamed. The frailness of our bodies bathed in the shore break of nature. I understood things there, how we differed and how we were the same. Humanity is weak, in essence. Each fledglings portion, every tiny cell is manipulated and not of its own accord. People are governed by trends that they are convinced are proper, through words and actions and promises the government, church, family, science, or what have you imposes their will into the very composition of my dna, struggling to gain a foothold over one another and corrupt what innocence and pride remain. Altering my own will so that I help assert theirs instead. Luckily, our wills are strong enough and steadfast in the berating onslaught of life, they keep their shape and thus we stay true to ourselves.
    I allowed an eyelid to creep open, if I let myself submerge in the depths of thought I might miss something important. I watched the rise and fall of your chest, the flicker of your eyes under closed lids, a familiar habit that etched itself deep into my heart. Despite the inevitable weakness I saw in every person, your beauty outweighed it. As a fire yearns for more timber, I too desired the fabric of your body. In my own weakness i reached out to touch, finger tips along the curve of muscle in your forearm, and even in such gentle contact the rhythm of your heart could be felt.
    With a lover’s care I lifted your shirt, the frayed hem peeling back to expose milky smooth skin that looked all most drinkable. As the ends of my index probed the beginning of your ribs I watched your skin ripple like the surface of a lake disturbed by a pebble. The sight seemed normal, and with the nonchalance of an artist’s grace I edged my digits in deeper. Your skin gave way, that galaxy tightly packed dermis parting willingly for my invading curiosity. The steady beat of your heart was stronger, and I called to my inquisitive hand. We were now conjoined like Siamese twins, my arm buried in your torso and fingers curling around your dainty heart. In some macho human fashion that didn’t suit or flatter me, I always wanted to claim this meek and feminine organ. You chose to shield it, instead of offering it willingly, playing off of my cowardice and manipulating my ambitions to fit you best. And readily I allowed you to do so, thinking it would only bring me closer to your guarded core.
    But now I had it, and without you so much as noticing. Vice like intensity clamped down upon contracting aorta and throbbing vena cava in efforts to squelch their consistent beat. Hot fire incased my embedded limb, my only response the gnashing of teeth and a tighter hold around what I desired. It felt to me like the veins and bones of your still sleeping body sought to entrap my invading hand. The honed tips of several rib bones skewered my arm while thin ribbons of vein bound and locked me to you.
    Surely this must be some deranged dream, some acid inspired nightmare that now ravaged the waking portions of my mind. But the pain was real, it was yours and mine. Your eyes opened starkly and your left hand dove deep into my own chest. I wanted to vomit, but as the bile rose I swallowed it back down to from a cold black lump in a corner of my stomach. I could feel you icy fingers swimming in my veins as they pried and wedged bones and tissue from the softness of my organs. And with your own vice you embraced my heart with nails extended. This was the only way I’d get what I wanted, and that realization left a pathetic whimper in my lungs. The intensity and strangeness of feeling clouded my mind. It had only been moments ago but I remembered the poppy and how it had fallen to pieces, that was how my arm felt buried elbow deep in the firmament of you flesh. Your Triumphant smile accompanied me as I felt you pull and tug on my own beating life. Dissecting the cords of fabric the entombed my heart to my chest. You ripped it from me still living, and like a strange fruit you peeled back it’s bloodied outer shell. You drank deep from my missing heart, the blood, my blood, coursing down from the corners of your lips, blanketing your body in my crimson foundation. Consuming my sticky sweetness with bestial hunger, I couldn’t help but laugh. I wanted us to be together…to become part of each other, and somehow..this was fitting. My heart was drained, emptied and shriveled as you squeezed the last drops out onto red stained tongue.
    We laid tangled, fiddlers green stained with a fresh carpeting of blood that nurtured the growing life we rested on. This is how it would be.

    Satisfied, you asked “How long will you hold on for?”
    My only response was a smirk and a grip that death could not refute.