To bite the dust: a short piece of fiction and poetry.
see how the room singles out its friends,
draw them to the walls, the shadowy nooks,
away from the dazzle, & i'm one of them.
Don't you want to touch fingers in the darkness,
blind tips with chewed nails bleeding anxiety.
Don't you want to watch the walls inch
into atomic explosions, suck the air
from your lungs, so we can laugh about
how silly it was at the party, alone,
in our superman cape & the sineating
space each body gave to our universe.
See how lonely we are.
I drag the roach, burn my finger, lick the tips and suck on the the last glow, smoke curled like a cat on my tongue. She is watching me with greedy eyes as her fingers dance in the flickering shadows on the wall. She smoked two blunts before and the party was still hot. She leaves the wall and stumbles into me. I can feel my body in the light years between our follicles react to the heat of her sunrise skin. I stretch my burnt finger towards her like a stoneage man just discovering a god sleeps in the wood carving beside his feet but i'm afraid that i will fall.
She giggles like rain on the roof of my eyes. I swear her laughter has colours in them, many colours. I want to wade in that chromatic ecstacy. I draw another rolled blunt from my pocket. Her giggle becomes a gale and the sea draws closer than knife in death's pale bone fingers. She opens her mouth in awe at the glorious sight of the blunt. She smiles and her eyes shine.
The party seems faraway now, like a distant ditty in the ocean's liquid lips. It is just the two of us in the universe of our longing for escape. She draws close and slinks into my body, feeding me all the sun in her bones and my pores drink like i have slept in winter forever. She seems to know what she is doing to me, for her eyes glitter and her lips grow white with sharp teeth. When the teeth breaks my skin like fornication, i simply gasp and then she takes me.
when birdwings are like sorrow,
heavier than a wet duvet.
I slip through the opening darkness,
expecting a shadow to malform into morning,
a friendly face that i can own,
someone willing to look me in the eyes,
willing to put arm into arm & say friend.
I'm too early into the loneliness of dawn.
I sag against the wall, a tree bowing to the tears of a god. It is as if she drinks the smoke from my lungs. I'm numb with the worship she gives and i want to escape her tender chains but it is no use. In that poor position, i draw out my gas lighter and light the blunt. She stands to the side, watching as i take a toke. There is a smile and blood on the side of her mouth.
"You have bewitched me," i say.
"I have given you freedom," she replies.
I can still hear the laughter in the rain but the clouds are dark and swollen like flatulence. The shadows grow as large as hills and the puddles gather other puddles into themselves as if seeking to upend the sea down our throats. It is sudden the flood of emotions that leave me into the world. By the time, the heavy storm got to my knees and people are climbing to the roof of the hall to save their lives, I have become stone.
She watches me from across the flooded hall, her hands playing with the hair of the new river that heaven has forced down our throats. Her fingers thread the water into a dance, lighter than silver, brighter than moon beams in the embrace of a solitary river. I stagger into a body wet with sweat, cold with fear, flapping hands and the hands grab me and drag me down to see the ravine of death's hungry maw. But she is there. She falls like molten rock to the bottom and sits there in the water. She waits for me to rise, to find my path, to know that nothing will ever kill me again after her.
"We are one now," she says.
I scream. Water rush into my lungs but i do not drown. It is then i realise that i do not breathe. Gods i do not live. She smiles as understanding claws my heart through my mouth. I push off the last lethargic attempt to escape attempted by the stranger dying their own death and swim to the end of the world. She joins me. We watch the sun set on the new sea. The music has stopped playing since. The partygoers in their loud clothes and bright voices are floating the canoes of their body into the horizon. For the first time, i do not feel so alone. All it took was a few rolled blunts and a bite.
THE END
Yours always,
Osahon (warpedpoetic)